Minis
by inkedinserendipity
Summary: A collection of various prompts that I have filled on my tumblr - from fluff to angst to everything in between! All about Moana.
1. Chapter 1

Prompt: Can you write a thing from right after Maui leaves, and he talks to Mini Maui and decides to come back?

All right, here you go! One order of angst, as requested.

* * *

Maui's flight from Te Fiti is silent.

He's not sure why that _bothers_ him. It's been a thousand years since he's interacted with another soul, it's not like this is a change. It's definitely Mini-Maui, Maui decides. Mini-Maui and nothing else. Just that the tiny tattoo hasn't said so much as a word for the past two hours, and honestly, Maui's kinda worried that he's fallen off the tapestry or something. Thing is, he's got no spread of tattoos and no way for him to check up on the little guy when he's more feathers than skin.

With a reluctant sigh, Maui begins to skim the horizon for islands. He's got all the time in the world to check up on his little buddy _but for some reason his eyes flit from side to side with panic like he has somewhere to be like he has someone to save -_

Maui quashes that thought firmly, the uncomfortable roiling feeling of anger returning to the pit of his stomach. No. No, he's left that stupid journey and the stupid mortal girl behind on her boat _in the middle of the ocean too wide for her to cross alone -_

Maui lets out an audible groan of frustration, pushing himself up further into the clouds. "Knock it off," he mutters to himself. "She'll be fine. She'll go home and keep on kissing babies or something."

He wishes he could believe it.

But that doesn't solve the problem of his stubborn mute tattoo, so Maui spirals downward toward a flash of green over the horizon. It's freeing, in a way, to have the updrafts under his wings once more. Moana was like a chain, he thinks vindictively. He always had to stay on her boat and guide her through the very basics of wayfinding, trying to make her into something she could never be. Honestly? He's better off without her.

Holding onto that thought, Maui hits the ground with two feet on the sand. "All right," he starts, already feeling a headache coming on, "what is your problem?"

Mini-Maui just crosses his arms and stares.

"Look, I didn't have to stop for you to sort out your feelings," Maui points out sensibly. "So just spit out whatever you want to say and then we'll be on our merry way."

No movement. Just a defiant stare full of stubbornness and, if he looks carefully, a bit of disappointment.

Oh, so now Moana's turned his little tattoo against him, too. Is there anything that girl hasn't ruined? His hook, and now Mini-Maui?

"Spit it out, Tiny."

Mini-Maui glares at him angrily, the first visible reaction since the beginning of this whole conversation. "There we go, now he's back," Maui rolls his eyes.

That earns him a punch right in the chest. Much as Maui complains about his tiny tattoo-self he has to admit that the little guy's left hook is pretty damaging.

When he finishes rolling his eyes, there's a canoe on his chest.

And Maui's not sure why, exactly, that suddenly makes it so hard to breathe. Because it's just sitting there, motionless in the water. The ocean around it makes no movement, there's no breeze filling its sails; just the lifeless wood and the emblem of the Heart dead in the wind.

Maui opens his mouth to say something scathing, probably a couple witty quips in there for good measure, until a mini Kakamora appears on his chest, a harpoon flying over its head.

"Cute," he manages dryly.

Mini-Maui's nowhere to be found, but Maui can just tell the little nuisance is behind this. "I don't know where you're going with this," he growls, "and I don't care."

The vision shifts, and the giant crab on his back appears on his chest, and Mini-Maui is lying on the ground. For all the world, his tiny self appears to be dead, or at least unconscious, and Maui thinks it would make a much better rendition if Mini-Maui didn't have his tongue sticking out.

Then the small Tamatoa picks up the tiny Maui and slams him against tattoo-border that separates Maui's chest from his shoulder, and Maui winces in sympathetic pain before he realizes what's happening. Then toward his collarbone, and Maui can see his own little mouth opening. And again and again _and again -_

"Okay," Maui finally snaps, because this is far too close to memory for his own comfort. "What's your point?"

At his words, some unseen force still the crab's hands. The Heart of Te Fiti appears, hovers over the small Tamatoa, then leads the giant crab away from Maui, who still appears senseless on the floor.

Then the Heart reappears, no longer pursued by Tamatoa, and hovers gently over Mini-Maui for a moment. It pulses once, quietly, and Mini-Maui sits up.

"I'm not going back," Maui snaps. "I'm not! I'm better off without her."

Mini-Maui crosses his arms and glares at Maui.

"She destroyed my _hook_ ," Maui hisses, like his little tattoo needs reminding. It sparks in agreement at his side, filling the nighttime sky with sickly purple light. "She almost got us killed by Te Ka, and might I remind you who had to save her from the lava demon? Me! I could've just ran and I didn't, I saved her, and she - it's because of _her_ that my hook is cracked!"

There's a long, long moment of uncomfortable silence, during which Maui notices abruptly that he's panting angrily. He hisses at himself in ill-constrained fury and turns away.

His little tattoo has more to say, he knows it. But if Maui crosses his arms over his chest and ignores him then he won't have to listen.

Mini-Maui prods him in the shoulder. Maui crosses his arms tighter and stares out at the horizon.

 _Horizon,_ his traitor mind thinks, _you taught her how to cross the horizon._

Angrily, Maui turns his gaze toward the sand. She is done. Her quest is over. Moana failed. She can go home and brag about how she met and let down the greatest demigod of her people, and maybe a hundred years later after she's dead and gone Maui will flap on over to her island just to see what became of her.

If he even finds her island, he realizes. Without the Heart, her island will crumble, just as have dozens of islands that he and Moana passed during their journey to Te Fiti.

Mini-Maui's next punch takes him by surprise. Like his little tattoo is demanding his attention. "What?" he snaps.

But Mini-Maui's gone by the time Maui looks down. Instead, in his place hover two emblems. One, his hook - and the other, the Heart of Te Fiti.

"Oh that's _just_ what I needed," he hisses. "A reminder that even though I gave up my hook on this stupid mission I still didn't restore the heart. Thanks, little buddy," he spits, "you're really making me feel better."

Mini-Maui doesn't reappear. Instead, the two symbols start to float up and down, almost a bobbing motion, one raising higher than the other before floating back down beneath. When Maui studies it, he notices a crack running down his hook.

A scale.

"My hook," he answers, because _duh_. For thousands of years, that's all he's been thinking about. His hook and his legacy. There's no way he'd choose his hook over some Heart and some girl. "Make that - make the hook float a bit higher. That's my choice."

The hook falls on his chest, then shimmers for a couple of seconds before the boat reappears again.

And just like the first time, the sight of it knocks the wind out of him, like someone had taken a oar to his stomach. For a couple of seconds, Maui just gapes, then shakes his head. "What have I told you, I'm not -"

The Heart.

The Heart of Te Fiti, he realizes, watching it waver into existence over that lone boat.

Moana still has it.

And that realization, it is that realization that makes him physically gasp, because of course. He'd dropped it, hadn't he? On the deck?

(Of course he had. He does not think he will ever be able to forget those few minutes aboard their boat spitting _so you can prove you're something you're not -_ )

And if Moana has the Heart, he realizes with another blow to the stomach that feels like revulsion and anger and disgust and guilt all in one tight ball, one that scorches him hotter than the fires of Te Ka could ever hope to burn, then she will set sail for Te Fiti with or without him.

"I'm not going back," he says in an automatic denial, but it is weak even to his own ears.

And there is Mini-Maui again. There is nothing of judgment in his face, not any more - just understanding and maybe a little bit of sympathy. Maui kinda expects him to show Tamatoa once more, remind him of the time he spent beaten and broken at Tamatoa's claws _until Moana saved him_ or on the beach with the head of a shark _despairing until Moana pulled him up once more, said it is not the Gods who make you Maui -_

 _it is not your hook that makes you Maui -_

Mini-Maui wraps him in a hug, tentatively, and Maui can't return it. Can't move his fingers at all.

When Mini-Maui pulls away, there's that choice on his chest. Right over his heart. The hook or the Heart, and Maui knows, he knows that it is not the Heart he will lose if he does not return.

It is not the Heart of Te Fiti he would lose should he choose to stay, he thinks, panic bringing sentiment to the forefront of his mind.

"Moana," he says, out toward the water over the horizon. He looks down, eyes wide, toward his tattoo. "She has the Heart."

Mini-Maui nods, once. Slowly and solemnly. Then he pulls his own small hook, broken and battered, from behind his back, and plucks the Heart from the sky. He lets his tiny hook fall to his feet and draws the Heart of Te Fiti close to his chest.

It is not the Heart of Te Fiti that he would lose. It is his own.

Moana never left him. Not when he tried to abandon her to the Kakamora, not when he left her defenseless in Lalotai, not when he was broken and beaten by a crab dozens of times his size. Not even, not even when he had given up on himself.

Without thinking through the motion, Maui stands. Hefts his hook. Looks to the sky. It is dark, the skies dimmed with the first rays of sunlight rising over the horizon. He cannot see over the waves and he cannot see through the skies but if he raises his hand and tilts it just right, he can see his path to Te Fiti.

There is no time to waste. No battle cry leaves his lips as he shifts effortlessly into the body of a hawk, leaping up toward the winds. There is no relaxed joy in his movements now, only a budding panic that pushes him faster and faster.

To the island of Te Fiti he sets his sights, and he knows the way.


	2. Chapter 2

Prompt: So, since you had an angst-fest with paper earlier, how about this: PTSD!Moana: her not being able to listen to certain drum songs because the remind her of the Kakamoras and she can't sleep after hearing them / her parents/blood relation having to wake her from what they think is a nightmare when it's in a night terror and Moana won't recognize them at first so she'll have the time to seriously hurt them before she comes back to herself / she needs to sleep with her signed oar to sleep at all.

* * *

Moana, Sina soon learns, does not return the same.

To the rest of the village - including, perhaps, Sina's own husband - Moana is the same girl that left the reef. Though there are callouses burnt onto her hands and lining the pads of her feet, hair a bit longer and face a bit wiser, she is still Moana.

But Moana does not come to her people when she dreams, eyes wide and unseeing, calling out a name that Sina knows only from legends. It is not to her father that Moana drags herself, an oar in one hand and a clenched fist from the other, in the terrifying grog of a memory. It is to Sina that she comes, under the cover of darkness, and speaks of horrifying tales that Sina knows will never burden the ears of Motunui's children.

It is not to Tui, nor her people, that Moana comes when her sleep is plagued with nightmares. She does her best, under the cover of the stars, to muffle her sobs and keep her father from waking. But Sina sleeps lightly - a habit accumulated from motherhood - and from her, Moana can hide little.

Sina does not hear the whole story, and never all at once. But it comes out in bits and pieces. Always, always as Moana speaks she clutches the oar to her side, like it is a lifeline and she is drowning (and Sina thinks maybe, maybe she is). She catches a glimpse of a heart on the side, a hook nestled on the other, and though Sina tries she cannot help but hate, a little bit, this demigod that has left Moana on her own with memories too dark and nightmarish and otherworldly for even Moana to bear alone.

* * *

The demigod returns, several months after Moana's sail topped the horizon of Motunui. Sina learns very quickly that the warrior face of which the demigod brags was passed to her daughter as well. "It doesn't matter how you feel inside," he would sing to the children, a huge and boisterous grin on his face, "don't reveal inside, you keep it real inside," and the demigod would never quite notice the way that Moana would slink from the shadows of the _fale tele_ , expression plunging flat with all the capriciousness of the trickling tide.

And Moana is good. That much Sina must concede. Moana sits through the demigod's reenactments of their adventures with a grin almost - _almost_ \- wide enough to match his own. Sina watches them and wonders if the demigod notices how her lips turn down at the edges even though Moana does not mean them to. Her voice is cheery enough, sure, her movements loud and exaggerated to match Maui's, but the light fades from her eyes the second her audience looks away.

The feast to commemorate the demigod was ordered by Moana herself. And it comes as no surprise to Sina that on that night, her daughter and the oar at her side seek her company as the moon shimmers over the sea.

* * *

Maui is well out of practice. A thousand years from the company of mortals has left the demigod with a head too full of thoughts of himself and not enough room for the humans with which he shares the world.

That said, he notices.

In bits and pieces, and not as quickly as Sina did. But to his credit (and her gratitude, she forces herself to think through the kernel of hate she is trying to suppress because _he did this, he stole the Heart and he has stolen her Moana from her_ ), notice he does. While the village and Moana's own father remain in the dark, fooled by Moana's warrior face, Maui pays attention and takes heed.

But he does not know how to act. This, Sina knows now from the shreds of story that had torn her way from her daughter's lips, a wretched tale of abandonment and doubt and misery, is a common problem of Maui's - so long alone on his island, and he has forgotten how to _be_.

* * *

It is with thoughts of Tui's mother and Moana in her mind in equal measure that Sina pulls Maui to the side. He is, she can tell, unaccustomed to being yanked around in such a manner (by the lobe of his ear), but he follows her with surprisingly little complaint.

And the pain on his face - and it is so raw, so fresh, she knows that pain, the pain that never goes away no matter how much time passes, always rubbing and hurting and _aching_ \- the pain on his face when Sina relays to him what her daughter had told her in the midst of her nightmares, well….

It is almost enough to give Sina hope.

She knows that she will not get her daughter back. The Moana of old is dead. She died, somewhere, out on that great sea the takes and takes and pretends to give but steals all the same.

But she can hope, now - she can hope and pray to the demigod who loves her daughter, that the new Moana fashioned in the hands of destiny will one day smile just as wide as the toddler who had once giggled cheerily in her arms.

* * *

After so many long years as the wife of the Chief, Sina knows success when she sees it. And when Moana and Maui emerge from the _fale tele_ , their voices finally ceasing after a long night of talking (and those are tears tracks, after many long years as a mother Sina knows the telltale effects of cathartic grief and they show on both faces in equal measure, and it is with something of awe that Sina realizes that her daughter her precious daughter reduced this demigod to tears), Sina marks it down as a victory.

She does not know what was said. With this, Sina is content; it is not her place. (She recognizes the making of a legend when she sees one, and these two - her daughter and the demigod, side-by-side as though they fit together, as though they might one day fit together in the stars and in the voices of legends - these two are inseparable.)

She sees the light return to her daughter's smile and for her, that is enough.

The village does not expect the demigod to stay. And he does not, not forever. But he tarries for months on end. He checks in with Sina, every few days, offering to help. Though he cannot fish and cannot grow crops and she rejects his offer kindly at every turn she appreciates the thought all the same.

Moana does not come to her any more at night, her oar clutched in white-knuckled fists. It sits instead in a place of honor in Moana's _fale_ , inclined against a post and ready for the day when the Voyager Chief will once more take to the seas with her people behind her. When the sun sets over the seas, just right, Sina catches a glimpse of a heart and a hook carved into its wood.

Sina is not sure how he manages - but now, on those increasingly-rare occasions when Moana wakes with a startled gasp or a sob, Maui is there. Sometimes he naps in the _fale tele_ , sometimes it takes him several minutes to drop from the sky; but when Moana calls his name, now he is there.

And that hope grows, blanketing the hatred that had taken root and calming it. Because in the morning, after the two talk - sometimes for minutes, others for hours - Sina sees the smile of her little minnow in Moana's face in the morning.

The old Moana is dead. But in this new Moana with the demigod Maui always by her side, Sina sees hope.


	3. Chapter 3

Prompt: For the promnt(?): Maui protecting Moana from danger after she put up quite a fight?❤

For the first time, I'm attaching a warning to this piece: there's a bit of violence. It's nothing too graphic, but if blades make you squeamish, tread carefully.

* * *

"Remind me again why we're here, Curly."

"Because," Moana grits, hefting herself up another few feet, calloused hands easily finding niches to lever herself upward, "One of the monsters in Lalotai Fuefue's _tuiga_."

"Oh yeah, the _faomea_. Those ones that compulsively collect emblems of power and all that, right?"

"Sounds about right."

"Heh." Maui scoffs, hefts himself up another body-length. "I know those guys. Think some of 'em tried to fight Tamatoa for my hook at one point. And of course, we're here in Motunui's best interest of trade."

From above him, Moana flashes him a huge grin. "Nothing to do with the fact I've been stuck on Motunui for months," she nods solemnly.

"Uh-huh. Also not like Fuefue's got hordes of warriors on her own island waiting for a chance to prove themselves," he points out archly.

"They could never match up against me." Moana rolls neatly toward the top of the entrance and flashes Maui her best grin. "Fuefue took a couple up on their offers, but once we stepped in to offer aid - because let's face it, they couldn't survive more than two minutes in Lalotai - they all backed out pretty quick."

"I think that had more to do with my intimidating musculature than any status of yours," Maui retorts, chuckling as he vaults next to her. As he's soaring through the air he adds in a couple of backflips, just for show.

Moana shakes her head ruefully at him, and Maui pouts at her. Heh. She can practically see him planning his next set of acrobatics when they launch themselves into Lalotai. As for Moana, well, she's mostly just hoping that she can stick the landing this time and not go rolling off the side like some stone tossed off a cliff.

"Ready, Fishfeet?"

"Of course."

The ground rumbles open obligingly at his _haka_. No matter how many Moana witnesses it, she doesn't think she'll ever be able to completely dispel the awe at his sheer strength. Most of the time, Maui is a goof and a pain, but in times like these his ferocity and strength shines through.

Then he turns around and does a little half-bow, gesturing her toward the entrance, and all impressions of godly magnificence are instantly dispelled.

"How chivalrous," she snorts, peering over the edge. "Opened the door for me and everything."

"You're lucky I didn't push you," he retorts, and she sees the idea of actually doing so entering his eyes so she performs a hasty dive into the purplish waters of Lalotai.

Another thing that never seems to change - though she's been to Lalotai a half-dozen times in her admittedly short existence, the descent is just as jarring and irritating as the first. The impact of the surface of the water against her legs, each time, feels as though all her bones are shifted a little bit to the left. It's disconcerting and nauseating and definitely Moana's least favorite part of the downward dive.

Above her head, Maui leases his favorite "Chee-huu!" and the water breaks once more to let him slide down the water-tunnel a bit behind her. Moana focuses all her energy on catching that one huge vine on the way down, because it's her only shot at not slamming into the ground again. The last two times she's managed to get a solid palm and a half on it, but once she only grabbed it with one hand and nearly yanked her arm out of her socket.

Gravity reasserts itself as the water tunnel ends abruptly, and Moana finds herself careening toward the ground. It's half-instinct and half-thought that helps her shoot her hands out. Both of her palms smack solidly against the waterwood and she lets out a brief yell of triumph as her momentum carries her up and around the thick trunk, performing a couple flips before landing solidly on her feet.

She can hardly help the huge grin growing over her face. Oh, how she'd _missed_ this - out on the open ocean, voyaging and exploring, fighting and finding. There is nothing quite like the rush from sticking a perfect descent into the mortal-feared realm of monsters.

Right on time, Maui catapults down next to her, spreading his arms wide in acknowledgment of his perfect descent. Then he glances down toward her and smirks. "Nail the landing this time, Fishfeet?"

"Both hands on the vine!" she cheers, pumping a fist into the air.

"There we go, Curly," he grins, and though Moana's hand is still tingling from the rough bark of the waterwood against her palm she returns Maui's high-five with excited vigor.

"Okay," she starts, shaking out her palm to get the tingles to go away and pretending not to see Maui's smirk. "All right, Demigod of the Wind and Sea, where are we headed?"

"Uh…."

"Maui! You told Fuefue you knew where they were!"

"No, no, I definitely do."

"Then where are they?"

He gestures in a sweeping arc around them. "Lalotai?"

Moana mutters darkly at him and stalks ahead. Maui lets out a cheery laugh and bounds right up to her side.

* * *

Thankfully, their lair doesn't take too long to find. Already Moana can see what Fuefue meant as she related her peoples' legends of the _faomea_ \- their whole cave is huge, massive, and glimmers with everything from the mundane to the extraordinary. As they approach they pick their way around fields of gouged earth and weapons that glint menacingly at them from their place entrenched in the soil.

"Not the best way of organizing their stuff," Maui comments disapprovingly, frowning at a curved blade that juts too close to his foot for Moana's comfort.

"Tamatoa was much more organized," Moana agrees. She toes at a dulled goblet with words written on the side. It's odd - made of a strange material she doesn't recognize with markings she's never seen before. "It's gonna take a little while to hunt through these things."

They both stare at the heaps and heaps of baubles and trinkets (none of which shine in the light of Lalotai - otherwise, Moana guesses, Tamatoa would have snatched them) with something approaching resignation. It's going to take them hours. "What if the _faomea_ come back while we're still hunting?"

Maui, who had already moved toward the first pile, glances back at her and shrugs. "Hand their spiny butts to them," he grins, and practically dives into the cold embrace of metal and stone.

Moana shakes her head and picks a second at random, one full of soft-ish materials that look much less painful to stick their hands in than the one full of spears and swords and daggers to her right.

They spend an hour or so digging fruitlessly through heaps and heaps of items that look more and more like trash the longer Moana wastes pawing through them. "I thought the hardest part of this would be the _faomea_ ," she grits, frustrated. "Turns out it's finding the stupid thing."

"It's good luck they haven't shown up," Maui replies, poking his head out of a stack of maces with abandon. "I've seen 'em fight before. Terrifying little beasties."

Moana scoffs. "It'd have to be real hard to move with spikes all over them."

Maui shrugs and dives back in. "Yeah, they're not the most mobile. Let's just hope they don't show up."

"Honestly I'd welcome it," Moana mutters to herself. Anything for a diversion.

Then, as though the Gods themselves have heard her mounting irritation, Moana spies something pink and fluttery and definitely recognizable as a _tuiga_. With a whoop of victory, Moana snatches it from the pile and holds it up in triumph. "Got it!" she hollers, shaking it a bit in the air.

"For real?" the pile says, then trembles to split and reveal Maui. "Huh. Whaddya know."

"Thank goodness," she breathes, still grinning. "That took ages."

"Psh, you just think it did because you hate Lalotai."

"Yeah, because I have a good head on my shoulders! Sorry if I don't like being a sitting duck for passing monsters."

"Quack quack," Maui replies drily, then nods his head toward the exit. "Shall we?"

"Let's." Moana tucks the _tuiga_ under her arm, and strides through the door. She's wondering what embellishments Maui will add to this tale when the earth shakes around her.

Behind her, she hears a muttered curse and tenses. The earth shakes again, and again, vibrating like a great stone were striking it repeatedly. Maui steps next to her, dropping into a fighting stance, and raises his hook. Moana glances around for a weapon, sensing danger, and grabs a staff from a nearby haphazard pile of weaponry.

" _Faomea_?" she guesses quietly, and Maui nods.

The ground rumbles one more time before the _faomea_ burst into their own cave.

Moana categorizes them quickly even as she raises her staff in defense. They're twice her height, about half Tamatoa's size - which is fine, Moana's used to dealing with enemies far larger than herself - except they're covered in spikes, head-to-toe. They run on three legs, each one tapering off to a point, Moana mentally marks as an incapacitation method: take out one leg and the _faomea_ goes down.

Moana tenses her grip around the staff as the first one charges. She mutters a quick "Go" to Maui, jerking her head toward the second and third (five, she counts five total), and he whips away without hesitation.

It's a matter of timing, Moana reminds herself, ignoring her heartbeat slamming in her ears as the _faomea_ bounds toward her. For this she lets her warrior face fall, looking frightened and intimidated, clutching her staff more like a support than a weapon, and right as the _faomea_ poises itself to trample her she adjusts her grip and drops to the ground. Releasing a ferocious battle cry, Moana slides beneath it, viciously pleased at its small grunt of confusion, and stabs upward with her staff as she passes its spineless underbelly.

It roars in pain and confusion, turning to look for her as she darts around it, keeping behind its back. Its feet move too quickly for her to hit but Moana leaps and ducks, maintaining herself within arm's reach, waiting to strike. It's tricky work, keeping herself from being impaled by its trampling feet, but Moana is fast. One, two, three dodges before it makes a mistake, lingers in one place for too long, and she jabs outward with her staff, swinging it with a _hup_ and sending the monster crashing to the ground.

Even downed the _faomea_ is several times her size, already scrabbling to regain its feet, but Moana moves quickly. Feet and hands moving faster than thought Moana vaults herself up onto its back, uses the spines as handholds, and scrambles through the toughened maze of its back right to the joint where its head meets its oversized chest. With a sharp jab, she drives her staff right into that sore spot, and the monster flops to the ground with a short cry of pain.

From the relative safety of the _faomea_ 's back, Moana crouches next to its spines and looks for Maui. She tracks him by sound, finds him grinning wide with the thrill of battle on the other side of the cave, dancing from hawk to lizard to human and back again, slashing and confusing and laughing all the while. He's preoccupied with three of the _faomea_ , one of whom she sees is missing its nose.

That leaves one, she tallies mentally, and from her vantage point scouts the last. Her frown deepens as she looks all around the cave, mentally counting and re-counting. There were definitely five before, and now there are four - could one of them have fled?

Moana is about to dismiss the matter for a moment when a flash of dull gray catches her eye. She looks toward it and sees, panicked, that the lair of the _faomea_ has a second shelf, much like the one on which Maui had hid during her confrontation with Tamatoa. His tactic is about to be reversed, Moana can see the _faomea_ poised to leap down on Maui, and she calls a warning and hurls herself from the relative safety of the _faomea_ 's back, sprinting toward him.

Maui hears her warning and turns. Unfortunately, so do the rest of the _faomea_.

In one movement, the three turn toward her, see her no longer cowering with her staff; then they focus on their unconscious comrade. Then they spot her pendant and Moana can place the moment that they realize, somehow, just who she is, and they charge.

From there it is instinct alone that carries Moana through the fight. The _faomea_ rush her at once, screeching furiously, and Maui soon after. She slips under the first and dodges the feet of the second, then rolls toward one side to make the second collide with the first but forgets the third and almost gets clobbered until Maui nicks its leg with his hook. Then both of them lose track of the fourth until it comes splintering down behind them and the _faomea_ regroup, forming a ring around them, feet click-clacking ominously around the duo.

Adrenaline pounds through Moana's veins and she's sure Maui feels the same, seeing his nigh-maniacal grin and his hook held aloft over his head. "Ready?" he sing-songs, eyes glinting with anticipation.

"Always," she grins, and within the same heartbeat the two spring apart. Moana targets the third _faomea_ , sliding in one burst of momentum beneath it. It's a bit more clever than its first companion and stomps on the ground as she goes, but she avoids each leg with deft ease. It's only about half-turned when she pops up on the other side and smacks it right in the side with her appropriated weapon.

It wails and jams its feet into the ground but she's already gone, leaping to one side, aiming for the underside of its flank. It shimmies to one side and Moana catches a glimpse of the second _faomea_ approaching the fight so she rolls beneath that one, changing course abruptly. With a quick snap she hits its side before really even entering her slide, taking it off-guard, then leaps to one side to avoid its legs as it shudders.

It collapses to the ground in a heap, and Moana, flushed with victory, turns back to the third to finish the job but there is something sharp and heavy flying toward her and it cracks across her ribs -

Moana's head is ringing, her vision blurring. She gets the vague sensation that the floor should be below her, not above her - then she becomes aware, though slowly, like she's thinking through a mist, that she's falling.

When she lands, the curved blade, one of the daggers she'd noticed earlier, catches Moana in the side.

Moana doesn't even feel it, at first. Everything's a bit hazy, and the rocks she'd rapped her head on when she landed were…not gentle, to say the least.

Then everything explodes into color and pain.

She makes the mistakes of looking down and there's a blade through her side and one part of Moana's mind says _it's just your side the worst it can cause is a couple of broken ribs_ while the other says _focus on breathing or you're gonna lose a lot of blood_ while the other is just a lot of incoherent panicking.

And unfortunately for Moana, the latter is a lot louder than the rest, so instead of keeping calm her vocal cords act before they consult the rest of her and she lets out a stifled scream of pain.

Well, she tries to. The air doesn't quite come. Her yell becomes more of a gasp, then that gets caught in her throat and turns into a half-choke half-sob and throughout this whole thing she's made shockingly little noise but somehow her small sound of pain makes Maui turn like the whole cavern is collapsing. As she spasms the pain intensifies, but at least when she looks down again the blade is no longer through her but that's an awful lot of red coating it.

It's almost funny, Moana thinks hazily, vaguely aware that she's trying and failing to curl on her side and probably jerking around like a caught fish, just how quickly Maui's face loses color. That cheery fighting expression that lit up his face not two seconds ago is gone in less time than Moana can blink. When he opens his mouth to say something Moana realizes abruptly that she can't hear anything. Then the pain in her side intensifies, turns to fire, so Moana blocks out everything except breathing because she's having some difficulty with that basic task right now.

She's still got both lungs, she thinks, but moving _hurts_. Moving hurts like drowning, like the immense pressure at the bottom of the sea except worse, like the sting of a thousand sea urchins and the bite of a moray all at once, and Moana would gladly stop except to stop breathing means to stop living and Moana's not quite ready for Tagaloa quite yet. So instead she focuses on panting, trying desperately also to keep herself from crying because not even the pain of _tatau_ can measure up to this and also because she doesn't want Maui to worry.

Her heartbeat is rushing in her ears and when her vision releases itself from its little tunnel Moana realizes that the whole ground is reddish, now. It's the seafloor, so it's fairly absorbent, but Moana gets the feeling that even the crimson hue left on the seafloor means that she's losing a lot of blood.

For the first time, it occurs to her that she might die.

Her breathing progresses quickly past "rapid" straight to "hyperventilation" because this is not how she wants to die. There's still so much she hasn't done and hasn't seen, there is still more out there past the horizon, and besides if she dies now Maui will blame himself.

Someone's talking to her, voice high and panicked, and Moana forces herself to open her eyes that she hadn't even realized she had closed. Maui's face swims blearily into focus and instinctively Moana reaches toward him because he should not look so upset but she'd forgotten, in that moment, just how bad of an idea movement is right now -

"Moana," she hears her name, and when she can look up Maui's hovering over her, hands flitting anxiously along her chest like he wants to fix it but doesn't know how. " _Moana!_ "

Moana does her best to nod at him. "You're - you're awake, okay. Good," he speaks quickly, and she kinda thinks he's talking more to himself than her at this point, "okay I'm gonna need you to - to stay awake that's what you're supposed to do, right, just - just focus on me. On my voice," he says, and finally his hands decide to wrap around her shoulders.

She lets out an inadvertent hiss of pain as he ends up shaking _her_ , and he lets go in a panicked blur of movement. His lips are moving and Moana thinks he's still talking but she stops paying attention right about the point a giant shadow looms over his shoulder.

 _That_ gives her the strength to speak through the pain and she chokes a meaningless warning that Maui understands because Maui always understands her. Realization dawns in his eyes and between one thudding heartbeat and the next his hook is back in his hands and he is standing and the looming monster is little more than a trailing arc through the skies of Lalotai.

In an instant, he is terrifying. The transformation is quick and brutal; one moment, his face was plagued with concern. Now he is frightening, a face to match with her grandmother's legends of old. He stands protectively in front of her, knees nearly touching the ground with shoulders tensed around his ears, hook hefted easily in front of him.

For a few seconds his hook flickers in and out, movements wavering like he wants to issue a challenge but there's something holding him back. He swats at the nearest one, just enough to send it skittering backward, before looking back at her.

There is still fight in his expression, yes, but it is not the chilling persona he had adopted in that half-moment. There's a muscle jumping in his jaw and panic of the likes she's seen only when he faced Te Ka bubbling behind his eyes and Moana is helpless.

"I'll be right back, okay?" he reassures her, fingers twitching around the hilt of his hook. There's anger, dark and ugly, in his eyes but not when he looks at her. It dances around his peripheries as the remaining monsters circle them once more. "Stay awake, Moana. For me."

Around them, the three _faomea_ regroup, completing a ring around the two of them. Their beady little eyes train on Moana's pendant with greed.

Then Maui roars, a long, heart-stopping noise full of rage and grief and fury that startles even Moana. Between one slowing heartbeat and the next, Maui leaps into action, too fast for Moana to follow. The cavern rattles and shakes with noise as bodies far too large to belong to Maui slam against them.

Her blinks grow longer and longer, but Moana wills herself to stay awake. She tries to sit up, to at least grab the dagger mere inches from her hand, but the twitch of her finger nearly makes her sick. Instead she sits back, panting in deep shallow breaths, and does her best to follow the fight.

There is nothing of the arrogant joy in Maui anymore. Indeed, there is nothing but vicious rage. His movements are quick and decisive and too fast to follow. The ceiling above her judders with hit after hit as he lines them up and decimates them like they weigh less than coconuts but it's hard to watch. Fury and grief turn the soft lines of her Maui to a hardened warrior. She can't look him in the eyes, because she does not recognize him.

If he had fought like this against Te Ka, Moana does not doubt who would win. Both reassured and scared, Moana gives up trying to watch and lets her eyes slip shut.

* * *

There's a voice calling her name. Moana hates it because it sounds like Maui and he sounds upset.

It calls her again. Toward the voice lies agony and Moana does not want to, she wants to sleep, because in sleep there is softness and warmth and breath. But Maui is the other way, so Moana gathers herself and wrenches herself back toward the voice.

Once again, Moana makes the mistake of gasping for air to find that it does not come. Instantly she wishes she had continued to sleep because if this is not Pulotu she does not know what _is_ , and her hands clench against the ground as she struggles for breath convinced that this that _this_ is how she is going to die and she does not want to she wants to go out with the sea, to be voyaging and sailing –

The voice calls her name again, imploring her to _breathe_ , syllables heavy and bleeding with panic, and Moana forces herself to listen to it. It's Maui's voice and if he's calling her name it must be important, whatever it is –

Finally the advice permeates her ears and she shoves down the survival instinct that begs her to breathe faster to get air now and focuses instead on slow inhales. Her breath deepens to straggling gasps, finally, and Moana did not think she would be glad to feel such pain in her chest but at least she can _feel_ still instead of that terrifying panic with the certainty of death. Even now her whole body feels hazy, like she's falling and landing all at once and it's disconcerting, but she focuses on Maui.

She rasps his name really quietly but he hears anyway. "Moana? Gods, okay, I…you're hurt bad…" he says and his words fade in and out of focus and she blinks too slowly trying to follow "…but you're not bleeding anymore and…you just have to stay awake, okay?"

Moana opens her eyes and finds that when she focuses on breathing gently, the pain is manageable. Granted it's still horrible, but it's more comparable to _tatau_ than dying and she has gotten tattoos before, in fact the wings of a hawk curl around her shoulderblades and that pain she can deal with. So long as she keeps her breaths shallow she can open her eyes.

Moana doesn't even recognize Maui for a half-second, the image of her Maui turned fierce warrior still stark and livid in her mind. For a long second she does not understand how they are the same, the warrior of terror and legend who slams his enemies beneath his heel without so much as a spare thought, and the demigod who crouches over her with panic clear on his face. Then she blinks again, and gone is the Maui tearing through _faomea_ as though they were little more than fleeting clouds on the sky shorn by his wings. The Maui of Motunui reasserts himself in her memory, and despite herself she sighs with relief.

Around her, the lair of the _faomea_ is pretty much desecrated. The wall is pockmarked with dents the length of her arm and the whole ground is cracked through, the pyramids of trinkets sent into disarray and scattered along the floor. Moana makes the mistake of glancing toward one corner of the cave and instantly looks away, grimacing. She hadn't really wanted to see what the insides of a _faomea_ looked like.

She spots Mini-Maui and Mini-Moana as her gaze returns to Maui, both pressed up against Maui's chest trying to make sure she's okay. Once she spots them she lifts her hand in a weak two-fingered wave and grins as best she can. "'m awake," she slurs to all three of them, and grins with victory at the coherent words that leave her mouth.

"Good," he breathes, hand resting instead on her forehead for a brief moment. "Good. I, Moana - I don't know what to do," he admits helplessly.

Moana takes a deep breath, slowly, and steels herself to look down. Maui's taken the outer wrappings of his _'ie_ , the longer one that Tui had bequeathed him several years after he and Moana returned from Te Fiti, and wrapped it around her torso. It's faintly pink but as Moana prods it with gentle fingers it doesn't feel like she's still bleeding.

She shrugs, settles her arms back at her sides. "Nothing you can do," she rasps. "Let's just get outta here."

Maui stares at her like she's crazy. "What?"

"Well, do you _want_ to stay?" she coughs.

"Moana, no," he says, like he can't believe the words that are coming out of his own mouth. "You can't move yet." He gestures toward her whole body, then lays a gentle hand on her shoulder, trying to get her to lie back down.

Moana bats it away. "I'm fine."

He's speechless. Under the cover of his shock, Moana pushes herself up onto her elbows and shakes her hair out of her face. Any more movement and she's probably going to tear her side open from the incredibly delicate position in which he has bound it. That said, the longer they wait, the more likely something _else_ will come find them. And Moana's not too keen on finding out just how far away sharks have to be - or their Lalotai cousins - before they smell blood.

That thought fills her with determination, and she pushes herself into a seating position. Instantly her whole side flames and even without Maui's renewed efforts to get her to stay still Moana collapses back to the spongy earth in a clatter of elbows. Moana looses a low string of curses from between gritted teeth, trying and failing to keep from crying. Again? Crying again? She raises one tentative finger to her eyes to find that yeah, the skin's definitely swollen. That's…embarrassing. No wonder Maui had looked so panicked.

Actually that doesn't surprise her at all.

Speaking of Maui, he's saying something. Moana shakes the haze from her head and squeezes her eyes shut, then focuses on his face. "- are you _crazy_?" he's asking, and she'd think he was upset if not for his hand smoothing the hair and sweat back from her forehead. "You can't just - you're _hurt_ , Moana, you can't just up and leave!"

"Watch me," she grits, hoping for a laugh.

Her joke falls miserably short. "Moana," he starts again, and oh boy she's messed up because now his voice is quiet instead of loud, "please don't do that."

"Fine," she concedes, hoping to dispel the worry in his face. She reaches up to pap his cheek awkwardly, gives him her best smile and hopes that it's not lopsided or something equally embarrassing. "I won't go alone. But we do have to get out of here."

"There's nothing around us, Moana."

"Yeah, except for sharks," she remarks dryly. She twitches a leg experimentally and instantly regrets that decision. "Entire swarms over our head. And a giant crustacean that's wanted revenge on you for ripping off his leg since, what, a thousand three-hundred years ago?"

"I can deal with them," Maui replies instantly, and the effect is negated because his hook is laying in the middle of the lair of the _faomea_ , far out of arm's reach, looking to the untrained eye like little more than another addition to their collection.

"I don't want you to _have_ to deal with them."

Moana braces herself to try sitting up again. The thought of another bout of pain like that makes her almost physically nauseous, but then she remembers the last time Maui and Tamatoa were in a cavern together and decides she can deal with _that_ far worse than she can deal with one measly flesh wound.

"We're not going anywhere until you get better!" Maui snaps, actually snaps, trying to keep her down without touching her side.

"Maui, we can't stay here."

"Yes we can."

"No, we can't. Because something is going to come along and find us and if - _if_ \- it gets the better of you then that's the end for me." She points toward her stomach, arching an eyebrow in his direction.

It's a low blow and she knows it. But instead of conceding at the thought of Moana's demise like she'd hoped, Maui glances down toward her side and vows, voice gritted and dangerous, "They won't beat me."

For a second, the sheer resolve in his voice catches her off-guard. It's not pure confidence that drove those words from his mouth. It sounds more like a promise than a statement of fact.

"Look," she rallies after a couple of seconds, because Moana recognizes obstinacy taking over Maui's expression and she does not want to leave him here with all sorts of horrible beasties that probably have some sort of grudge on him from several millennia ago. "If someone does spot us, then that means you have to fight. I'd be a lot safer out on the ocean where no one can find us."

"You can't walk, Moana!"

"Then carry me," she suggests, more a jab than an actual suggestion.

But then Maui sits back like he's taking that thought seriously, and Moana goes to backpedal and realizes that it might not be the worst idea. The sooner they can get out of here, the sooner both of them are out of danger.

"I don't like this."

"Unfortunate," Moana grins cheekily, hoping it'll smooth some of the worry lines creasing his forehead, and makes grabby hands in his direction. She's done the same gesture dozens of times when she's too tired to walk back to her _fale_ from their stargazing spot on the beach, and she can see the moment he places the gesture because the tiniest bit of concern leaves his face, replaced by fondness.

Moana hopes he doesn't realize until they're well out of the cave that actually taking the spout out of Lalotai is likely to at least tear her wound open again.

The demigod regards her for a good long moment, momentary reprieve gone and face darkening as he looks at her side. He shakes his head, gaze flicking from the fallen _faomea_ and crusting with anger at the sight of their blank eyes. Then he takes a deep breath and says "Okay."

Moana bites down on a whimper as he lifts her, gently, because the tiniest movement jolts through her side. She has to bury her face in his shoulder to keep from vocalizing anything. The last thing she needs right now is for Maui to change his mind and decide that he can just throw himself in harm's way to keep her from getting hurt.

"All right, Curly?"

"Yeah," she gasps, then swallows hard and replies again, voice stronger this time. When she looks toward him his eyes are uncertain, watching her with open concern. She flashes him a grin despite the motion-induced nausea roiling in her stomach and finds that it doesn't move the worry from his face at all.

Instead of replying he reaches over, gathers her hair out of her face to brush it over his arm. Then, with a muttered word of warning, he shifts her gently to one arm, and she keeps her jaw locked to keep from crying out again.

Slowly, he hefts his fishhook, and when she mentions it grabs Fuefue's _tuiga_ as an afterthought. Then he jogs evenly out of the cave, raising his hook in front of her as he runs.

Moana ends up with her eyes clenched shut, breaths coming in shallowly as she focuses on keeping any and all vocalizations well inside her vocal cords, thank you. There are a couple of rough spots as he hits an incline, but the loudest she gets is a muted whimper and she's pretty proud of that fact. Every step, every jostle makes the pain in her side intensify and she can't help the tears that start to roll down her face, but she buries her face in the crook of his shoulder and keeps quiet. She does pretty well until Maui hits a rock or something and stumbles and the impact jolts right through her ribcage, tearing a helpless sob from her.

"Moana?"

"All good," she replies hastily, utterly unwilling to look up and show him her pained grimace. It's quick work to bury the agony in her voice and respond again, hoping to reassure him. He can't stop, she just wants to be out of here, she's willing to endure this as long as they both are safe at the end, but if Maui stops to check on her he'll stop entirely.

Then he slows to a halt and nudges her chin out of his shoulder. She tries to refuse but she can't, and his fingers are warm against her face. Reluctantly, she makes eye contact.

He recoils instantly at the sight of her tears. "This was a bad idea," he says, breathing agitated. "I shouldn't have started this."

He _starts to turn back_ and the thought of moving backward is almost enough to make Moana sick. "Don't turn around," she begs. "I can't - just keep going."

"This is _hurting_ you!"

"I imagine dying would feel worse," she rasps. From somewhere within her she conjures a glare. She's sure she looks a mess, covered in sweat and tears and her face probably isn't responding the way she wants it to, but evidently something works because Maui stops retreating.

There's a long, long pause, during which there is no sound between the two of them. Almost unconsciously, Maui shuffles her closer to his chest. Then, shoulders slumped in defeat, he sets off again.

This time they go slower, much slower, and though it's agonizing it's at least bearable. She's not sure how they manage it - maybe it's Maui winding them through some stealthy path of Lalotai toward an exit - but no monster so much as glances their way at the demigod with a mortal in one hand and his hook in the other, a _tuiga_ hanging off the handle. They make good progress for a couple of minutes, and Moana is certain that they're nearing an exit.

Moana can tell the exact moment Maui catches sight of the vent because he stops dead.

"No," he says firmly, staring at their doorway back to the Overworld. His fists clench painfully around her knees, arm tensing beneath her back. "No. We're not doing this."

Moana pulls her face from his shoulder, confident that it's not as flushed as it was earlier. Now that he's stopped, she can breathe a bit easier. "There's no other way out," she points out reasonably.

"Moana, you _won't make it_! This is insane. I'm not doing this."

"There's literally no other escape route. We have no choice."

"But we don't have to go right now!" He looks back the way they came, then to her and back again and adds "We can wait a little while, not until you're better -"

"No! No, we have to get out of here, what if something else comes back -"

"So what?"

"What do you mean, 'so what -'"

"Even if something else comes for you - I can't let you step inside that vent and kill yourself trying to escape! I'm not losing you because you - because you think I can't defend you!"

Moana gapes after him for a second, speechless. He blinks as the words leave his mouth like he hadn't meant to voice them before he draws himself taller and pointedly does not take them back.

"It's not that," she protests quietly, and she really does not want to be having this discussion with her currently foggy head.

"Then why not?" he demands sharply. " _Why not_ , Moana?"

It's only the burning in her side that keeps her from burying her face in her palm. She hates this, hates that she can't move and interact with him, that she's trying to fight with him while she's literally helpless in her arms, but there's no point commiserating things that cannot be changed.

"I know you can," she whispers, because that was never a doubt. "I just…" she gestures around her, toward all the shadowy figures and sickly bright lights that consist of Lalotai, contributing to the overall feeling of _sick_ and _wrong_ that permeates the atmosphere. "I'm just scared that you'll lose."

"Exactly! You don't trust me to keep you safe! What can I do to convince you that _I can protect you_?"

"I know you can, Maui!" she grits, forcing the words out despite the pain radiating through her chest. "But it's not me I'm worried about. I don't want to lose you just because I can't defend myself." Her voice breaks and she can't blame it entirely on her weakening lungs. "You're not…what happened with Tamatoa, Maui, I…I can't do that again."

Maui flinches. "It won't," he replies rashly, and Moana thinks she sees desperation in his eyes. "We'll both be okay."

"I know," she replies softly, trying to reassure him. "I know that's probably true, but what if it's not? Just like you don't want me to take this chance, I can't let you sit here with a target on your back."

"No. This is crazy and I'm not letting you do this." He shakes his head firmly. Readjusts her in his arms like he can protect her just by cradling her closer. His heart thumps against her ear and Moana's face pulls into a frustrated scowl despite the warmth all around her.

He's not going to listen to her. So Moana steels herself, curling her own hands into her chest, and pushes herself out of his arms.

The shock of hitting the ground shudders through her chest but Moana grits her teeth against it and half-rolls, half-falls into a crouch. Instantly pain spears through her side again, squeezing helpless tears from the corners of her eyes. But her brief momentum is enough to carry her toward the opening of the vent so she pushes herself over the opening.

Maui leaps forward like he's been struck, hands falling on her shoulders before she can so much as look up, steadying her. But when he tries to push her away from the exit she glares and shoves his hands away.

"Don't try to stop me," she growls, wishing her voice were more intimidating.

"Moana, _please_ ," Maui says, voice cracking on a plea. His hook clatters to the ground. "Please, just wait, we'll be okay. Let me help. I _promise_."

Moana wants to be anywhere but here, anywhere but outside this fountain with her best friend trying to sacrifice himself for her.

She won't let him.

"In Lalotai, I'm a nobody," she starts, keeping her eyes locked with his. Now, now he is listening because he has no choice. "Just some mortal that got lost. But you," she continues, jabbing him in the chest, "they know you. It's you they'll come after. You can't afford to stay here with me dragging you down and I can't afford to stay here without some sort of treatment. We don't even know if I _can_ get better. So I am going to get out of Lalotai and yes it's going to be terrible and I'm probably going to pass out somewhere along the way, but at least we won't be open targets." Moana stops for breath and jabs him again. "I'm going. Are you coming with me?"

Maui sits heavily against the ground of Lalotai, gaze trained at the spout that bubbles with propulsive energy. His gaze keeps flicking from it to her and it to her, expression approaching something like physical pain, and Moana wants to take it back and smooth his expression from worry but she's not about to let him stay here and get killed trying to keep her alive.

"Fine," he concedes quietly, voice tired. "Just…."

"I'll be careful," she promises, even though they both know the words are empty because once the exit claims her there will be little she can do but hold her breath and pray. Behind her, the fountain strains against the ground, and it's almost time.

Maui laughs once, a quiet, defeated sound, then scoops her up.

Despite her resolve, her heartbeat races as she stares at the exit in trepidation. Moana tries to take deep breaths before remembering that breathing in general is an unwelcome idea to her body at this exact moment, then squeezes her eyes shut. For a moment she wonders if she chose wrong but then she remembers Maui, slammed up against the top of Tamatoa's cave, rammed along the rocky wall, and winces inadvertently and decides that anything is better than that.

Even though her feet are no longer against solid ground she can feel the vibrations up through his whole body. It's coming, their escape is coming, and Moana can only pray that they will make it out alive.

Around her, Maui's arms press tighter against her shoulder, cradling her closer to him, like he can hold her together through willpower alone. Right before it explodes he presses his forehead against hers, just for a moment, and she leans her face forward as they both rocket upward.

After that, there is nothing but pain and encroaching pressure and a darkness that builds behind her eyes until, finally, nothing.

* * *

Moana wakes up to thunderous snoring in her ears. For a few long seconds she just blinks at the ceiling of her _fale_ , confused and disoriented. Then she glances down at her chest and finds it wrapped in clean white cloth and everything returns to her in a heady rush.

She groans and tries to sit up, tentatively, afraid that each movement will shatter one of her ribs or something. But there's nothing - just a faint pulsing in her stomach and a soreness in her legs from disuse. She prods at her own side with two tentative fingers, but aside from a muted twinge, she feels fine.

Reassured that she's mostly intact, Moana finally looks around. Her _fale_ 's pretty empty, tapestries rolled up to let light flood in, save a demigod snoozing in the corner. Her first thought is that Maui's just taking a nap, except it's broad daylight, and there are grey little rings around his eyes that make her wonder just when the last time he slept through an entire night.

For a brief moment she's tempted to wake him up, because relieved as she is that she's okay she's pretty sure Maui would be more so.

But for right now she'd rather he keep sleeping. So she yawns to herself, grabs her blanket, and settles herself against his side. One of the good things about having a demigod for a best friend, she muses as she drifts right back to sleep, is that all those muscles make excellent pillows.

And when he wakes up several hours later to find her curled against him, he pulls her into a crushing, relieved hug that she can't help but return.


	4. Chapter 4

Prompt: Maui is excitedly talking about places he's been to, ages ago. At some point, Moana stop him: "Wait! Do you mean that there a places Outside/Beyond the Pacific Islands. Like, not-islands?" *Cue Maui going Aw SHIT, I was not supposed to mention that to mortals… but that one gave Te Fiti her heart back, they're probably willing to make an exception. *Fast-forward to Maui and Moana talking to Kane & co. : "Maui, you can take your mortal out to see the whole world but on one condition: she will have to consider becoming a Half-God protector of humans when she comes back." - "Okay, I'll talk to her about that but, Why?" "You'll see more closely when you go by yourself but the general idea is that there is a group of mortal that decided they would conquer and rule everything. Only the conquering part include destroying everything they see and don't like. Since we like our islands and our mortals how they are now, it'd be nice to have two of you protecting them."

* * *

"We should really turn around."

From her position manning the oar Moana looks up at him, confused. "What? Why?"

"Because," Maui starts, then realizes he has no real reason, "because I've never been here before."

And if there was ever a _wrong thing_ to say to get Moana to turn around, Maui chides himself, wincing, that would be it.

"Really?" she gasps, eyes growing huge. "Wait you've never been that way before? Like never ever?"

"I mean, I have a couple times," he fumbles, trying desperately to backpedal without making his backpedalling obvious. "But a long time ago. It's dangerous out that way, there's…giant sea monsters and such."

"So what?" she cheers, pumping a fist in the air. "We can take 'em!"

"No we can't."

"Why not?"

"Because they're, um, really clever. A lot smarter than the average beasties we deal with out here."

"What, you think I can't beat them?" Moana grins at him, all full of mock-hurt like she thinks he's playing a game, and when Maui discreetly sends a gust of wind to knock them off-course Moana adjusts easily around it. Maui curses himself for training her this well. "I'm the cleverest Chief this side of the islands!"

"Okay, yeah that is definitely true, but you've also never been outside the islands."

And just like that, Maui wants to chop off his own mouth.

" _Outside_ the islands? What's out there?" Moana repeats wonderingly, absently binding the oar in place to stand, drift toward the prow of their boat. As she passes him next to the mast, Maui plants his face firmly in one palm. "You mean there's more outside the islands?"

"Uh," Maui says eloquently, scrambling to rearrange his facial features into something calmer while Mini-Maui lets out a veritable stream of chastisements on his chest, "no?"

Moana turns from the prow, her awed expression fading to suspicion. "Yes there is."

"How do you know?"

"Because you're doing that thing," she points out, jabbing her finger in his general direction. Even though she's trying super hard to be annoyed at him, there's a little bit of wonder and awe and anticipation tugging up her eyebrows. "The one where your voice raises up at the end and makes everything sound like a question. You do that when you're lying."

"No I don't!"

Moana just stares at him in exasperation, eyes falling half-lidded. When she plants her hands on her hips, Maui knows he's lost. That's it. He's done for. This mortal will never stop asking him questions.

"Yes you do."

"Do not."

"C'mon, Maui, you gotta tell me! Is there really more outside our islands?"

"I've never been. But there, uh…there might be," he concedes reluctantly, fiddling with the stay.

"Then we gotta go!" she yelps, that huge smile lighting up her face again. In an instant she is a flurry of motion, dashing from the prow to the stern and leaping to get her hands on the oar. As she moves she yanks on the stay to unfurl their sails, nearly catapulting him into the water, eager to catch more of the wind behind their backs.

Maui stumbles portward before reclaiming his feet. By the time he looks back up, Moana has this terribly eager expression on her face and the stay firmly in her grasp and the oar in her other hand as she navigates out toward the not-islands as easily as she breathes.

Maui shoves the budding mantra of self-recrimination, panic, and the hysterical urge to laugh into the back of his mind. "Moana," he begins, planting himself directly in front of her, blocking her view of the sea, "we can't go out there."

"Okay," she says, and Maui nearly decapitates himself with a spit-take. Is she just gonna give up on this? That's impossible, and Maui's about to tug her hair or something to make sure it's actually still Moana but then she says "why not?" like she's gonna need a _really good reason_ to not go wandering out into uncharted dangerous territory that makes even demigods nervous and instantly Maui's reassured that yes, this is his dear Moana who has less self-preservation than her ocean-diving chicken.

"Because there are beasts out there!" he points out, waving his arms to indicate. "Huge, smart things with spears and arrows and all sorts of pointy things that could kill you! It's really not a great plan if you want to return to Motunui alive instead of as driftwood, Curly."

"But no one's ever been out there!" she replies like it's obvious, like that's definitely a good reason for risking her life. "C'mon, Maui, we've been to Lalotai and Pulotu and Te Ka and back and we survived! How bad can these guys really be?"

Maui just sort of growls out his frustration, and despite himself there is definitely fondness mixed in there with exasperation. "The Gods forbid it," he says, because well it's technically true.

"You're not a God, Maui, you're half."

"No, the real ones. You know, the Gods themselves? The ones who live in the sky and kinda made the entire world? Yeah." Maui plops himself to a sitting position right in front of her, then grabs her oar before she can react. The blade almost hits him in the face when Curly resists harder than he expected and he can see his own little hook-heart speeding toward his eye before his reflexes kick in. "We might've been to Lalotai and even Pulotu, but this is the entire pantheon of Gods. And I know you don't listen to me when _I_ say no, Moana, but this time it's just not me."

Moana frowns at him, looking preposterously twenty years younger and like he'd taken a coconut from her or something. He hates that expression. Always makes him want to take back whatever churlish thing he'd just said.

He can just see the little strings in her head moving, tugging up ideas and dropping them back in the sea as she discards them. There's no way she's gonna think of a way around this one. This time, she's up against the Gods themselves. Reassured, Maui picks her up (without throwing her in the ocean) before replacing her at the stern with the oar in the water. Even Moana's thirst for exploration has to stop at some point, or else it's just gonna get her killed one day. Might be good for her to taste defeat now -

"Then I'll talk to the Gods," she suggests, expression lightening. "Yeah. Yeah, I'll make them change their minds. I am the mortal who restored Te Fiti, that has to count for something, right? Maui?" Moana steps toward him. "Maui, why are you hitting yourself in the head with our oar?"

He is decidedly not doing that. Just tapping himself lightly on the skull, because Moana literally _does not give up_.

"No," he says flatly.

"Oh come on, Maui! They like me, I think." Moana frowns downward. "Except Elo. But he's an exception! It'll be super-simple, let's just pop by Te Fiti and ask her."

It occurs to Maui that most people do not have to deal with wayward mortals determined to make social calls on the goddess of Life herself. And then it occurs to Maui that most people are not demigods saddled with protecting the most stubborn mortal since Tagaloa created the world.

"We're not hopping by Te Fiti on a _social call_."

Moana regards him for a long moment, then plants herself in front of Maui just as he'd done minutes before. "What's wrong," she simpers, "are you afraid of going out there?"

"No," he protests instantly. Mini-Maui, lying little traitor that he is, shows Moana a very different story. Maui thinks he can hear both Moana and her tiny counterpart giggling at the image. "I'm not!"

"Uh-huh. Well, I am," Moana tells him, and Maui would believe her except the giddy grin on her face. "So I'm going to need someone to take care of me while I'm out there. Since I'm so terrified."

"You sure sound it, Curly," he snorts.

"I am!"

Maui takes the oar and yanks it sideways, sending them careening to the right. Moana ducks under the boom like she was born with a bobbing head and Maui curses, once more, that he's trained her so well. "If you're so scared, just don't go."

"We both know I'm going whether I'm scared or not," Moana sing-songs, grinning full-on at him. Maui does not like that grin, not one bit. It's all full of cleverness and trickery and satisfaction and that's the smile she gives when she's won another argument. "It'd be much safer for me if I had a big strong demigod making sure I don't get myself killed."

It's with a huge sigh of resignation that Maui course-corrects toward the island of Te Fiti. For a long moment, in which Moana has definitely realized that he's changed course but is pointedly biting down on an excited laugh, Maui regrets ever mentioning those stupid islands.

Because he's not going to win this, he's really not. Now that Moana knows there is something out there, something new and big and dangerous, not even the Gods themselves could keep her away. He may as well go with her. Watch her back, make sure she doesn't die.

"First, we ask Te Fiti," Maui says, and though he's trying his best to make his voice sound exasperated it's hard to keep up the farce when Moana's beaming that excitedly. "There's no guarantee she'll say yes -"

"Then we voyage past the islands!" Moana whoops, throwing her hands in the air. She rearranges herself hastily to stick her hand out. "Deal?"

It's with exasperated fondness that Maui shakes with her on it. He can't help a rueful laugh. "Deal."


	5. Chapter 5

Prompt: Because I'm not gonna let you sit here and spit nothing but angst out all night, I don't think I've ever read your take on Moana and Maui's first time reuniting after the events of the movie. The first time Moana spots Maui on Motunui's shores. What the first thing they say to each other after not speaking a word to each other in months is.

* * *

Interacting with mortals is not, as a general rule, something that makes Maui nervous. It's just not. After thousands of years of seeing them come and go, he knows just how fleeting their lives are. So he's come to not much care whether individuals hate or love him. As long as humanity as a whole stays adoring, then Maui's content to keep doing what he's doing.

It's new, then, that Maui finds himself actually anxious as he hovers over Moana's island. It's…Motunui? Right? He thinks she called it Motunui, those several months ago as they headed toward Te Fiti. He could really do without the nervousness in his stomach just from looking at its spiralling peaks.

Worse still that Moana is right there in his line of sight, wandering obliviously along the shore in full midday, hoisting a basket of coconuts above her head.

This should be simple. He's spent a couple months in this girl's company. She's definitely going to be happy to see him. Yeah.

Maui takes a deep breath to steel himself, careful not to exhale it as a familiar hawk's cry, and swoops down toward the shore right in front of her. His feet hit the shore with a solid thump, and he straightens instantly with his trademark smirk. He crosses his arms over his chest and waits for Moana to notice him.

And she…doesn't.

Her gaze is fixed on the horizon even as her body teeters under the weight of dozens of coconuts. Maui suppresses the familiar urge to roll his eyes, uncrosses his arms. Briefly he debates clearing his throat, but decides that it'll be funny to just sit back and watch as she runs right into him.

She hits him basket-first, upending the entire thing all over the ground. Maui forces down a snicker because he doesn't want to start off this conversation with him laughing at her.

"Oh, sorry," she fumbles, not even looking up at him and diving instead for her basket. "I was just lost in thought! I didn't even realize you were…there…" she trails off, finally looking up. On his chest, Maui feels Mini-Maui give a tiny wave.

"Maui?" she shrieks.

"Hey, Curly," he says, trying for casual, but is pretty rudely interrupted when she flings herself toward him, wrapping her arms around his neck.

"You're here!" she yells, right into his ear. That poor badgered ear starts ringing painfully. It's with a strange mixture of exasperation and fondness, one that only Moana can produce, that Maui hugs her back. "I was wondering when you would arrive! Did you know that we're setting sail in a couple of weeks?"

For a brief moment, Moana hugs him even tighter, jabbing her shoulder into his neck and he'd kinda forgotten just how strong she is because it takes a lot to crush the windpipe of a demigod, but Moana, as per usual, manages the impossible. Then she finally lets go of him and drops back onto the sand, bouncing excitedly on the shore. "My people are getting it! They're really getting the hang of voyaging and I think in a couple of months - y'know, once we do a training course of course - we can go on a long one! There were so many islands on our trip that we just never got to go to and imagine what's on them, Maui. I can't wait to be back out there! And then -"

"Nice to see you too, Curly," he interrupts laughingly, because otherwise he's not going to get another word in edgewise.

"Thanks! Yeah. Sorry," she says sheepishly, threading her hand through her hair. She squats to re-amass her coconuts and tucks it easily under her arm even though the coconuts alone probably weigh like thirty pounds. "I got a little carried away. Uh, how have you been?"

"Pretty good," he replies vaguely, waving a hand toward the sky. "Cleaning out your seas, giving the wind a couple pep talks. Gotta make sure your village doesn't try sailing off and surviving on determination alone like their Chief-to-be-did."

"Hey," she grins, elbowing him in the stomach, " _I_ turned out fine."

"You were also voyaging alongside an actual demigod. Don't get full of yourself."

"Me? Full of myself?" She scoffs. "Never."

"I dunno, Curly. That kinda thing just sneaks up on you."

"Uh-huh," she replies archly, tilting her head toward the center of her island where her village doubtless lies, then trekking off in that direction like she's sure he'll follow. He does. "And you would know all about being full of yourself."

"Yes I would." No point in lying. He's the coolest demigod this side of Pulotu and he's not afraid to show it. But now that he's said 'Hey' and 'aren't you glad you can bask in my presence once more' (more or less verbally), he nods at her to continue her eager train of thought. "So tell me, Curly, you think you're gonna set sail pretty soon?"

And just like that, Moana's eyes light up. Heh. It's so easy for him to make her happy. "Yes! I've had to teach everyone the basics on land of course, because if we capsized out at the sea on the first sail that would be a disaster even though I guess it worked pretty well for me, but I think we're super close to -"

"Whoa whoa whoa," Maui cuts in, eyes narrowing. "It worked pretty well for you? What did?"

"Huh? Capsizing?"

"Yeah - oh wait, the first time you set sail. When you crashed on my island."

"I mean, that definitely happened," Moana nods, and readjusts her basket on her hip. "But I actually meant the first time. I, uh, may have almost killed my pet pig."

Maui frowns. "I thought no one knew how to sail when you left Motunui."

"Yeah, no one did! But I figured I would kinda learn on the job," she shrugs, and nods out toward the horizon. "I just kinda threw myself on the boat and figured things would work out for the best."

She smiles wryly at the recollection and spares a brief glance down at her foot. There's a patch of skin there slightly lighter than the rest, and though Maui's noticed it he'd never given it much thought. "They didn't quite go as planned. Pua and I hit the waves coming off the reef," she explains, gesturing toward the miserably tiny pipsqueaks of waves coming in from the ocean, "and capsized. I managed to get Pua back on the boat but got stuck on the seafloor."

She adjusts her basket from under one arm to the other, shaking out her arm with good humor. Maui stares at the sea, trying to imagine Moana - capable, confident Moana - capsizing on those tiny, tiny waves. "I almost drowned that day. Had to bash my way out of some coral with a rock I found on the seafloor. Scraped all the skin off my feet."

"Huh," he manages. It's strange and uncomfortable, thinking about how close Moana had come to dying before he even knew her. He doesn't like that thought at all.

"It's weird to think about now. Back then, I had…" she chuckles to herself, like sharing an inside joke with an audience of one, "…I had no idea how far I'd go."

For the first time, Maui can understand some of the terrors that had plagued her on their journey to Te Fiti. Why she would be afraid that her people would be disappointed that she had crossed the reef.

"But anyway," she continues, jolting him from that train of thought, "we're setting off really soon! I think in ten, twelve days or so we'll actually hit the water. You'd better come with."

"I'll think about it."

"Great!" she replies cheerily, like his non-answer was a solid yes. (Which it was, but Moana is not supposed to know that.) "Oh, come to think of it," she says, then her face lights up as she realizes what she's said and drives her elbow into his diaphragm, "if you're staying for tonight then we have to prepare a feast, which means - oh no we're almost out of _paifala_ and then we have to - we haven't rotated the grounds in at least a week there's no way we have enough fish…okay hold these," Moana blurts, and drops a basket of coconuts into his arms.

He staggers a bit under the unexpected weight. Moana dives headfirst into the forest, then stops as a thought strikes her. She pokes her head out from the thicket of trees to raise an eyebrow in his direction. "You are staying for dinner, right?"

"Uh…yes?"

"Great!" she beams, and if he had any reservations about staying he doesn't anymore. "One second, I gotta run and tell the huskers and the fishermen and the _umu_ tenders - never mind I'll be right back, don't move!"

Without another word, Moana bolts toward her village, leaving Maui alone with his basket of coconuts. And even though he's not sure where he's gonna go from here, and he's really inclined to just drop this basket of coconuts because he probably looks like an absolute fool holding them, he knows there's no place he'd rather be than exactly where he is.


	6. Chapter 6

1)Post-journey "Hey dad, how long did it take you to forget you wanted more from life that endlessly fixing everyone's problem?"

2)Post-journey: "What was Te Ka like, Moana?"-"You won't be able to imagine her."-"Why?"-"You dream small." *Reference to the Outtakes.

3)P-j, Moana with kids, telling stories of Maui's feats: "For a time, the people were happy with all the things Maui had given them but soon enough they wished for more: Please save our crops! Please help my stillborn child!, etc. So he thought long and hard of a way to help and the only thing he could do was to give them the power of Te Fiti, the power ton give (and take) Life. *Cue Moana making herself sad thinking and telling how Maui, by trying to earn the love of the descendant of the mother who threw his at the Sea, has only earned himself a thousand years of loneliness and a terrible reputation from what people assumed.

***I don't know if you follow closely Paper, but you might notice that my brain is stuck on "Moana becoming bitter/jagged/Other by talking with Maui and acquiring a 3rd point of view of her people (literally moving from Me and my people that I love to Them, the people I have been raised to love and lead)

* * *

Her father has something to say. She can see it itching at the corners of his eyes as she recounts her latest adventure. Worry coils in her stomach but she continues like she didn't notice, maintaining her animation.

The story ends to the applause of the children and the unnerved sideways glances of the adults. She's right - hardly has her crowd dispersed when her mother and father seat themselves next to her. Sina wrings her hands together in her lap.

Moana picks up her coconut and sips warily. Maui is some distance away, reenacting one of the scenes of their latest escapade to little Fetuilelagi with a huge grin plastered on his face.

"Moana."

"Dad," she replies, and her tone is maybe a bit cooler than she intends it to be.

Because she already knows what this conversation will be about. Ten years as Chief has taught her well what others are thinking when they look at her, and she is not blind. She can see how her parents worry. How their gazes darken when they turn to Maui.

Doubtless they have come to tell her to take care. To adventure perhaps less frequently, to stay longer on the island of Motunui. To guard her own life more carefully.

"Moana," her father begins gently, the tone he uses with enraged fishermen and wild animals on the new islands that Moana uncovers for her people. "You must be more careful."

Already, less than a sentence into this conversation and Moana is already drained. She steadies her shaking hands around her coconut, pulls it to her lips, and when she has swallowed says "I will, Dad."

She has heard this before. Worse, though, it is prompted by this watered-down and edited version of her story that Moana decided to present to her people. This lie. For in their fight with the walu, she and Maui were knocked from the cliffside. Moana presented the tale as though Maui had turned himself hawk, swooped beneath her to scoop her away from the churning seas. But in truth, Maui had turned them both avian - so that Moana could help herself.

Her parents would have been furious with him, for endangering Moana's life with an untested transformation. Moana does not regret her prudence.

Her mother shifts uncomfortably. " _Pele_ , you have told us this before. Yet you still come back with these tales of death. We are concerned for your safety, and…we wish that you were, too."

"I _am_ concerned for my own safety," Moana bites. They have had this conversation over and over and over again and never will they reach a satisfying conclusion. "That's why I have Maui with me."

"Perhaps," her mother suggests, quietly, eyes flicking nervously toward the demigod tossing a whooping Fetuilelagi into the air, "it would be best for you to stop journeying with him."

" _What?_ "

"You are Chief, Moana," her father intervenes. "We cannot lose you. Motunui cannot lose you."

"Arihi rules just fine when I'm gone." Moana sets down the coconut with pointed grace, turning the full weight of her gaze on her parents. "And I've come back safe before, haven't I?"

"But you may not continue to do so."

"There is no safer place for me than with Maui."

Sina leans back, takes a deep breath. "Moana, he is a demigod. He is an immortal."

"Exactly! He can protect me!"

"It…is not that. Moana, the gods are fickle. They change their minds on the trickling of the tides."

Moana's blood freezes in her veins. "What are you saying?"

Sina clasps her hands together tightly over her knees. " _Pele_ , there may…there may come a time when the demigod decides to put himself over you."

"Or perhaps misstep," her father intervenes at the horrified widening of Moana's eyes. "Perhaps through no fault of his own. He is immortal. It is easy for his type to forget how fragile mortals are. Do not forget how he stole the Heart, cursed us all."

"No." Moana's voice is sharp and brittle. "I trust Maui with my life, and I always have."

"Moana, Maui is a trickster. Our ancestors knew this, we know this, you know this. Your grandmother knew this too. It is his nature to deceive." Her father shrugs his shoulders helplessly, like he's trying to lift the weight of his own words off his chest. "There may come a day when he decides you are no longer worth saving. His life will last far longer than yours."

"That's not going to happen!" Moana retorts, letting her voice rise louder. A quick glance toward Maui shows her that he has not yet noticed their conversation. "It's been ten years, Dad, and he's stayed with me the entire time. He's not just going to _leave_. He wouldn't."

"But he did," Sina points out softly, and Moana winces despite herself.

How she regrets telling them of Maui's departure, how he left her alone on the open seas. It had planted a seed of doubt that she has never been able to uproot. However many times Maui saves them all, they are unable to believe in him. Her _people_ , the village she has been grown and groomed to love, cannot trust.

Confiding in them was a mistake.

"That was ten years ago, Mom. He's changed."

"How do you know that?" she presses. "Ten years is a long time for you, pele, but for Maui it is nothing. He has lived for thousands of years, for _millennia_ , long before the very first of our people. To him, our lifespans are fleeting."

"That doesn't mean he cares any less!"

"Perhaps for now. But, Moana…" Sina continues, expression softening, " some decades from now, you will die. And he will forget you."

Moana feels a bit like she's been punched in the gut. Did they somehow not notice the _permanent tattoo of her over his heart?_ "He wouldn't," she manages, and she hates that her voice is shaky and upset.

"He will." Tui rests a palm on Sina's shoulder, reaches out for Moana's hand. She does not take it, glaring at him furiously. Instead she bites her tongue hard enough for it to bleed, keeping herself from shouting her frustrations toward the midst of the _fale tele_. He withdraws it, defeat flickering over his face.

"Imagine, Moana, thousands of years. He has met thousands upon thousands of mortals in his lifetime, and to him they are nothing more than a blur in his memory. To him, you are a diversion for some hundred years, before he returns to the way in which he is accustomed to living. In another millennia, Moana, he will not remember your name."

"That's not true!" They know _nothing_ of Maui! "He will remember me. He trusts me, and that - that won't change even after I'm gone!"

"You cannot know how he thinks. He lies and deceives like he breathes, Moana. Please understand - we want you to be safe. And your safety does not lie with him."

Then, like a coconut whose skin was severed with a knife, the words spill out of her, all of her anger and frustration taking to the air of the _fale tele_. "What, so - so you think it lies here, on Motunui? Just sitting around giving orders all day? Sure, maybe I'd live longer, but it's not -" it's not _living_ , she almost says, not really, and for the first time she puts a name of the tired bitterness in her heart.

Living on Motunui - ruling - it is no longer living. It is dying, slowly, surrounded by people who do not understand her however hard she tries to explain herself.

"If you keep going, Moana, you will die! You will die before your time, and you will leave our people without a ruler -"

"So that's all I am now, is it?" she snaps, voice hard and furious. She leaps to her feet, snarling openly at her parents. They know nothing of Maui and they know nothing of her and they have made their own inability to learn quite, quite clear. If the dozens of times that Maui has placed her life above his own, has chosen death rather than see her gone, is not proof enough for them, then _nothing is_. "I'm a Chief, a trinket, the plaything of a god? That's all I am to you, isn't it?"

" _Pele_ , this is not -"

"When did I stop being your daughter?" She's crying now, tears hot and angry, and her hands are balled in fists at her side. Her parents do not stand. "When did I become nothing more than your Chief, when - when did you stop _trusting_ me?"

Surely by now Maui has noticed, but she doesn't care. She trusts him, and he trusts her. "It is not you we do not trust," her father says desperately, trying to lower his voice from Maui's range of hearing and Moana is suddenly, sharply angry. They think that if they keep their voices low Maui will not hear of this. They do not think that Moana trusts him with everything that she is. "It is Maui."

And just like that, Moana is cold. She looks at her parents, once so dear to her, and surrenders.

Her tears dry and she stands straight, tall, her chin above the ground like a jagged rock, impartial and imperious. "I know," she says, voice brittle and frigid. They do not understand and Moana tires of explaining.

So she leaves.

With those two words, Moana strides from the _fale tele_ , down toward the shore.

Her parents will not follow her there. They do not know where she goes when she is not in her village, leading her people. Because to them that is all she is - a Chief. A plaything, they think, of a demigod.

They are wrong. Moana is their toy, instead. A doll to be shaped, to lead.

But Maui will find her. Because to Maui, so different from her parents, she is more than a Chief. She is Moana.

And to him alone, that is enough.

* * *

As Moana looks back through her memories, she can read the path up to this point as easily as she can trace her way through the stars. For years now she has been careening closer, more and more unhappy with every day spent on her once-beloved island. Her adventures with Maui inched farther from diversions and closer to desperate escapades from the joys of leading that turned increasingly bitter.

For a decade now she has voyaged with him, seeing people and places and things that her parents would never be able to fit in their closed minds. Moana, alone among mortals, knows everything of Maui. Moana, alone among mortals, comforts him when he is upset, pulls him up when he is weak, tempers him when he is too strong.

She trusts him with her life, with her very essence. And Maui does the same for her.

Moana traces a spiral with her toes in the sand. At least on the beach, with the ocean, it is quiet. Out here, she can hear the soothing lull of the waves, far from the commotion and hubbub of the _fale tele_.

It all started, Moana thinks idly, with Mareana. Five years ago the elderly woman had followed Moana and Maui down to the shore. Found them joking and laughing. Mareana had stepped out of the trees to confront them. For an hour she screamed, ceaseless and furious.

For she had lost her husband to the ocean. He was a fisherman, and before Moana's time had struck out beyond the reef to find more fish.

His boat was lost. He did not return. Mareana blamed Maui.

Moana will never forget the way Maui looked when she called him scum.

So Moana intervened. Pointed out the dozens of gifts that Maui bore for humanity, risking himself time and time again for their fires and their islands and the coconuts from which they bring life and the currents and the waves and the winds curling into their sails. Matched Mareana's fury with her own.

Maui had done everything for them, for humanity. Risked everything that he was, time and time again. But in so few years he became their bane. They reviled his name, cursed him, uncaring that his gifts gave them life itself. Called him a coward and a thief and a trickster, called him callous and loveless.

They called him a monster, and Moana does not know when humanity became a "them" and not a "we".

Moana's words were enough to quiet her, but they came too late. Mareana retreated from the shore, but the pain in Maui's eyes did not leave for hours.

When Moana awoke the next morning, a feather of a hawk laid by her _fale_. Maui was no longer on Motunui. Moana took the feather and the growing doubt in her heart and tucked them both in the corner of her _fale_ , out of sight but always close at hand.

It was an until-we-meet-again, a _toe feiloa'i_ from her best friend, reduced to a mere feather.

It began at Mareana, she knows. So it grew with every insidious whisper, every well-intentioned warning. _Stay away from that demigod, her people_ \- her own people! - would tell her, casting distrustful glances in his direction. _He cares only for himself. He will not protect you._

They did not watch as Te Ka turned fiery eyes toward Maui's _haka_ , as he challenged her to smite him instead of Moana. They do not listen.

On this island, chained to her _tuiga_ , Moana is dying.

"Hey," a voice says, quiet and cautious above her, and just like that Moana's anger dissolves.

She knew that he would find her. She knew that he would come, and he has, and when all others in the village refuse to listen, he is here to hear her.

Suddenly she is crying, again, gasping for breath through waves of frustration and anger and sorrow, tasting something like defeat. However she pleads with her people to listen and trust, to heed all that Maui has done for them - all that he would happily do again - they do not believe her. Their minds are too small and they have grown so complacent in stagnation. It pains her, that they cannot be free.

She wants to be free.

Maui holds her as she cries, clearly confused and upset on her behalf but welcoming all the same. She presses her face into his chest and focuses on his arms around her shoulders, struggling for breath. Her forehead knits against the spiral of Te Fiti in his tattoo.

Her parents are wrong. He will not forget her. How can he? Even after she dies, she will keep his heart safe.

"'s okay, Moana." He rests his chin gently on the top of her head. His movements are awkward as he pats her back because he's really, really bad at reassuring crying people. It's one thing he's never been good at, right up there with smooth-talking and fishing. But it's comforting in its own way, because even as Moana realizes so much about her beloved Motunui, Maui stays the same. "Whatever's happening, Curly, you can take care of it. Head-on. It's all right."

She laughs despite herself, rubs her nose on her arm, and detaches herself from Maui. "There she is," he grins, bright despite the concern in his eyes. "C'mon, lemme see that warrior face."

"Rahh," she offers halfheartedly.

"Pathetic!" he reprimands. It surprises a laugh out of her. "I want my hair to stand on end, Curly, you gotta be much louder than that!"

Still working through the redness ringing her eyes, Moana then rearranges her expression. Out sticks her tongue and out rushes a roar. It's good, better, but they both know it's not up to par.

Maui shakes his head exaggeratedly. "C'mon, Moana."

She takes a deep breath, air brushing away the sticky cobwebs of tears, and roars at him, loud and frightening. Maui yelps, obviously fake, and pretends to recoil in fear. Moana can't help but giggle at the sight.

"There we go," Maui hums, folds himself more comfortably on the rock she's picked to reminisce. "That's the idea, Curly, just yell out at the sky 'til you feel better."

Moana snorts. "A coping mechanism for the ages."

"Well, worked for me for the past couple millennia."

"And isn't that a glowing endorsement." She elbows him in the ribs. "Look how emotionally stable you are now."

Maui catches her off-guard, switching his fond gaze from the horizon toward her. "I wouldn't say I'm doing too bad."

Just like that, her parents' words come back to her, and however she tries to stop herself she can't help her face falling.

Maui's mouth kinda twists upward. "Uh…d'you want to talk about it?"

Not really. She mostly wants to pretend it never happened, because she's still working through her emotions. They're uselessly scrambling around in circles, all these half-connected thoughts and impressions running in a spiral that curls tighter and tighter in on itself as the inevitable conclusion drags her inward. She doesn't want to realize, not fully, that she cannot stay on Motunui. That thought is dangerous and tempting, so she races around the outside, keeping her focus on weathering the clouds and thunder and rain instead of the eye of the storm, trying desperately to avoid its sweet reprieve. Motunui is all she has ever known. She can't leave.

She is dying.

Moana grits her teeth and faces those two undeniable facts, dragging herself forcefully into the eye of that hurricane, the sickly-sweet center.

"I don't know if I can stay here," she whispers, and then there is relief.

Now she stands in the center of her tumultuous thoughts, finally realizing the only possible conclusion. She looks back out toward the clouds and wondering how she missed it, all this time, this island of quiet and peace that was always within her grasp.

She can't stay on Motunui. She has to leave. It is so dark and suffocating among the people who never trust and do not care beyond their borders. But in the center, with Maui, in quiet acceptance and love, she breathes free and easy.

She wants to be free.

"It's…they don't…." Moana gestures in muted frustration toward the clouds, searching for a coherent way to put all these thoughts to words. "Living here, leading, it's just…."

"Try from the conversation with your parents?" he suggests carefully, watching her attentatively. "Might be a good starting point."

"Yeah. Yeah, okay." Moana takes a deep breath, rests her elbows on her knees. Maui mirrors her position. "They wanted me to…" there's really no graceful way to phrase this, "…stop adventuring with you."

Maui's mouth forms a soundless _oh_.

"They kept talking about - about how you're a trickster, and you've lived for thousands of years," she says, and now it's all spilling out of her, words hot and angry once more, "and they think that someday you'll just let me die for some reason and they said that you've met hundreds of mortals and that I'm not - and you're a trickster, right, so I shouldn't trust you.

"And then they brought up the Heart again, like that's some reason to not trust you even though you went and put it back, and it's like coconuts mean nothing to them. Like the sky - you've done so much for humanity and they just forget so easily!" Moana's ranting toward the ocean, words flowing from her before she can filter them. "Without you we'd be - we'd be crawling on the ground like pigs and we wouldn't have fire, we'd be freezing, we'd be well dead, all of us, and they just forget that so easily! Like they don't care!"

She turns, expects Maui to be angry, but he just looks kinda tired. "What do you think?"

The question blindsides her for a second. "About the Heart? Gods, Maui, I forgave you ages ago for that. It's just that they haven't. Millennia of gifts and they forget so easily. One misstep and it's like it never happened at all!"

"Not that," he intervenes, but his expression looks a bit lighter at her indignation on his behalf. "I mean about adventuring. Do you…are you going to…."

"Stop?" she asks, confused, and he nods. She blinks, and battles down the ridiculous urge to laugh. "What - no, of course not!"

"Oh," he says, with sound this time, and he smiles a little bit before hastily reassembling his expression into something graver.

The sight of Maui trying to force himself to be sympathetically stern makes Moana feel so much lighter. He's bad at inspiring speeches, sure, but he listens. "No, I'm not going to stop adventuring with you." She punches him on the shoulder, just for thinking it. How dare he, honestly. "Not ever. You're never gonna get rid of me."

She prods at Mini-Moana. The tattoo waves at her a bit, lifts her oar in a salute. Moana grins in response.

"Oh good," Maui deadpans, letting his expression relax in response to Moana's better humor. "What would I ever do without my annoying little sidekick at my side."

"I'm not a sidekick!" she yelps indignantly, hitting him again. She's pleased to see one of the little coconuts on his palm tree fall off. "If anything, you're the sidekick. You're the one with way too many muscles."

"Which makes me the hero."

"Does not. Intelligence makes _me_ the hero. And let's face it, you're just not on par with me in that area."

"Kiddo, I've got all the wisdom that comes from thousands of years experience. You can't hope to compare."

"You're also the one that tried to get off your island riding the back of a shark," Moana points out, amused. "Don't feel too bad yourself, though - Heihei was a sidekick too, at least you have company."

"I think I just got compared to a chicken!" he narrates indignantly to his spread of tattoos. "Me, to a mere piece of a poultry." He raises a pointed eyebrow at Mini-Moana, who shrugs. Then, with a burgeoning grin, she points to the right, where Mini-Maui - faithful Mini-Maui - gleefully adds another dash to Moana's scoreboard.

"Yeah!" Moana cheers, and bumps her fist against Mini-Maui's little hook. "Knew I could count on you."

Maui rolls his eyes, somehow makes the motion audible. "Uh-huh, uh-huh. Okay, _children_ , rag on Maui time's over."

"Maui time is over?" Moana repeats, cheerfully feigning incredulity. "I thought Maui time was never over."

"No, it isn't. I said being mean to Maui is done, Curly. No more being picking on your local demigod."

"Oh come on," Moana pouts impishly, leaning her head against his shoulder. "It's so much fun though! And easy!"

She gets another point for that one. Moana whoops toward the sky. She's well up in the thirties now, and they'd reset about a year ago when Mini-Maui realized he couldn't fit over a hundred on his scoreboard.

She wonders, vaguely, if Mini-Maui's made a scoreboard for anyone else.

For a half a second she debates the wisdom of actually asking that, then decides to just go for it. And though Moana can't see his face, Maui kinda jolts in surprise.

"No," he replies simply, the word deep and humming through his chest. "Nope. Just you."

Moana wonders briefly what would happen if she just…left.

If she voyages, forever. She could do it. She knows the islands well, now. There are plenty of islands stuffed with fruit, resplendent waterfalls of clear water. Provisions enough for hundreds of voyagers. She would never be lost, not beneath the sun and the carpet of constellations that mark her path. She would sleep on the deck of her boat, warm atop the seas, and while she dreams Maui would chart their path toward the long horizon line.

"I don't know if I can stay on Motunui," she repeats. Then again, stronger, cheek pressed against Maui's shoulder. "I don't think I _could_ stay on Motunui."

"Moana, your people are here," Maui tells her gently, shifting around so she doesn't have to crick her neck, sinking lower on their gray rock so she can lean against the top of his shoulder instead of his arm. "You're their Chief, and they love you."

"No, they love their Chief. They don't love me."

He has nothing to say to that, and when she tilts her face toward his he's confused. "There's a difference," she explains quietly. "Like - like you, kind of. Humanity loved you for being a demigod. For leading them to new islands, for bearing gifts. And they sure loved the idea of you." She's seen the figurines on some of the new islands she discovered, islands near Te Fiti that one held whole groups of people. Whales and lizards and hawks and Maui himself immortalized in wood carved by careful hands.

"But they never really loved _you_. And there's a difference. It's the same for me, I guess." Moana sticks her feet more deeply in the sand. "They love their Chief. They don't love me."

Saying these things aloud gives them tangibility. It's obvious, in retrospect. Her people have not loved her for a long time now. They adore her leadership and her _tuiga_ and nothing else. They care little for exploring, for wayfinding, for loving outside their village.

"Even voyaging and exploring, it's exhausting. It comes down to me to prepare everything. Sometimes I think that if I were to go somewhere else, they would stop entirely. Like the spirit of our ancestors just…isn't with them anymore." She lets her gaze drift toward the horizon. Even after all this time, it still calls her, its sweet lullaby dear to her heart. "Like their minds are closed to the ocean. They think all there is to living is leading, to being happy with what you have. And that's not me. That's their Chief, maybe, but it's not Moana."

Long ago, the Chief of Motunui and Moana had been the same person, full of restless energy, of hope that she could bring a change to her people. Experience has taught her that it is impossible. That after so long complacent and content, not even Moana could restore the love of the ocean to them.

So the Chief and Moana grew apart, separate. Two irreconcilable halves. And Moana cannot keep up this duality, no longer. She cannot continue to pretend. Her warrior face is breaking until, ironically, she drops it only for her teacher, for Maui. For her dearest friend.

Long ago, she thought she would not have to choose. But now she stands once more staring at the barrier along the shore, one foot on Motunui and the other atop the cresting waves, and finds that if she does not soon decide she will be torn apart.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah." Moana takes a deep breath, still looking toward that line, where the sky meets the sea. After all this time it calls her still. "I am."

His shoulder moves beneath her temples as he looks down at her. She returns his gaze curiously. "I might know a place."

Moana blinks slowly. "What? Know what place?"

"A place to, uh, go." Maui fidgets awkwardly.

"Where?"

"With the gods," he shrugs. "It was, uh, the first place I called home."

Moana sits upward, turning to face him straight-on. "With the _gods_?" she repeats.

"Yeah. I mean, I had to live somewhere as a kid, right?" he laughs nervously. "I, uh…Te Fiti, Taema and them, they raised me."

"Wait, wait wait wait. Te Fiti _raised you?_ "

"She raised most of the Gods. Took in Tilafaiga and Taema when they were really little. That's, uh…one of the reasons Tilafaiga hates me so much. Because Te Fiti raised her, then me, and I stole her Heart."

Moana's still getting stuck on _raised by the Gods_. She knew it was part of the legend, but Maui had just…never mentioned it.

"Wait, okay, stop. Te Fiti raised you? And all the other Gods? Then why - what happened, why did you leave?"

"She raised most of them. 'cept Tagaloa, of course. As for me, well, I was made for humans. I mean, I was one, at one point." He shrugs again. "It was kinda natural that I would want to help them. Didn't you ever wonder why no one else could get to the Heart? The Kakamora, Tamatoa? That's because Te Fiti would've stopped them." Maui shakes his head ruefully. "She only let me through because she knew me. By the time she figured out I meant to take her Heart, well…" Maui's fists clench against his _'ie_ , before he straightens his shoulders pointedly. "It was too late for her."

"Oh," Moana says, the word painfully inadequate.

"Yeah, 'oh.' It…well. Not my proudest moment. Anyway, right after you got back to Motunui I went to Te Fiti and them. Tilafaiga was all for killing me, of course, but Te Fiti said that wasn't necessary. Seems to think an apology is sufficient recompense for a thousand years of isolation," he shrugs, and it takes Moana a second to work out that he's talking about Te Fiti and not himself.

"Anyway, Moana, I think…I mean, they like you. Te Fiti especially. Sure, Tilafaiga's kinda iffy, but since Taema thinks you're pretty cool and Te Fiti in particular thinks you're the best mortal since Tane she's not gonna smite you on sight, at least."

Moana's head is buzzing uncomfortably. Just like that, her desire to explore is flaring again, stronger than ever. "And I could…go there? Would they let a mortal in?"

"Probably? Te Fiti could make a pretty good case for it if Tagaloa decides to be a stickler. But Tagaloa's a pretty chill guy, I've met him twice. It might work."

Moana could live with the gods themselves. With the _gods themselves_. Moana can see herself sailing with Maui, with the birthplace of the Gods over her shoulder. It's a mesmerizing picture, brilliant and hopeful.

"Think it over," Maui suggests, clapping her on the back and breaking her from her reverie. "Give it, like, a week. This is a pretty big decision."

"Okay," she says, and tries to ignore the voice that says she's already made up her mind. She kind of has. She can't stay on Motunui. If she leaves, Maui would go too. Her home is hers no longer. So she'll go to his instead.

Or at least, she'll go with him. She has found home with him, and the sea itself could be their home so long as they are together.

* * *

They leave a week later. Moana interrogates him a bit, heart thrumming with excitement. _Yes_ , there is food suitable for mortals, _yes_ there is water, fresh and pure, unlimited, a basin large enough to fill the ocean itself dozens of times over.

Her parents sleep soundly. Moana takes her _tuiga_ from its place in the rafters and sets it between them, where she had once nestled herself as a young child in the clutches of a nightmare. Once, there was space in their hearts for her. Now there is space only for the Chief and her _tuiga_.

So she leaves it behind, that which they value most. They will give her _tuiga_ to another, perhaps Arihi, and Arihi will lead well. She regards them for a moment, and after a moment's contemplation, she takes a hawk's feather from the corner of her _fale_ , lays it atop their arms as well.

Now they will know with whom she sails.

Now they will know she has gone home.


	7. Chapter 7

Prompt: Not sure how fluffy this can be but how about a prompt where Maui takes Moana flying in his hawk form for the first time. After seeing the drawings of Maui flying with her on his back I want to read something like that.

* * *

Maui squints angrily toward the horizon. He's spent most of the last couple of days bored, flicking in and out of forms, entertaining Moana by contorting himself into new types of creatures. From tortoise to tarantula, Moana seemed pretty overjoyed to see 'em all. Heh. That's one thing Maui can appreciate about his little voyaging protégé - she never seems to lose her awe of his shapeshifting prowess.

Unfortunately, fun as amusing Moana is, it's not too conducive to paying attention to wayfinding. Which used to be something Maui did without thought. But he finds himself now with a very hazy recollection of how far they've come over the past couple days and a budding sense of frustration at his own ability to remember. It's only been a thousand years. He should definitely be able to recall this.

He reassembles his thoughts, swivels along the mast to peer toward Motunui. It's over there, he thinks, over by that darkish patch of waves that means an entire mass of seaweed drifting underneath it. Or - they hit a swell earlier, about a half an hour ago, so maybe Motunui is actually nearer to the part where the sun sparkles off the waves?

"Maui!"

With an undignified yelp, Maui recoils from the small face that shoves itself in front of his. He grabs back ahold of the mast at the last second and ends up clinging to it like a small child to its mother. "Don't do that!"

"I had to!" Moana's grinning cheekily, quite pleased with herself for taking him off-guard. "You weren't paying attention to me."

"Write me a manual, then," he growls. _"The Care and Keeping of Your Wayfinder_ because apparently you need constant attention."

"You're one to talk," she rebuts cheerily, not at all fazed by his grump. "I was calling your name for at least two minutes. The only way I could get your attention was by sticking my face in front of yours."

Maui doesn't have a good response for that, so he selects his default - a heartfelt glare.

For some reason, that only makes Moana laugh harder. She wraps a hand more securely around their mast, the side of her palm resting atop his as she swings outward toward the sea. "So what's worrying you, O Hero to All?"

"Nothing."

"Uh-huh, and I'm a seagull." She raises one arm, flaps it dryly at her side. "Caw caw."

Maui huffs an irritated breath. "I can't remember which way Motunui is from here. Got so distracted entertaining you, Curly, that I lost track."

"Oh, it's that way," Moana says confidently, arching backward to point toward the patch of seaweed.

"You're sure."

"Certain," she replies, and he would be impressed, except when she swivels back to face him she sticks out her tongue in an expression entirely unbefitting of a Chief.

He arches a dry eyebrow in her tongue's direction. "Nice."

Moana grins, drops lightly to the deck, winds an absent wrist through the halyard. With a longsuffering sigh, he follows suit. "So, Fishfeet," he starts, tugging a bit on the rope to burn at her wrist and grins when she lets it go with an irritated yelp, "what was so important you had to scale the mast to get me?"

"I had an idea -"

"Taema help us," he sighs.

"Stop that, Maui. It's a good idea."

"I have yet to hear one from you, Curly," he replies dryly, and she shoots him a glare. Maui leans smugly against the mast. "Let's see if today is a good day for firsts, shall we?"

"Yes," she says with a secretive smirk, "let's make today a good day for firsts." Then she clears her throat, flicks the halyard, and positions herself right in front of him. "So. Maui. You've spent the last couple of days shapeshifting -"

"- an astute observation -"

"- and I wanted to try it out."

Maui stares at her. "You wanted to watch me shapeshift again?"

"No," she replies impatiently, tapping her foot against the deck. Then a huge grin spreads across her face, one that reminds Maui uncomfortably of the first time she'd asked him to teach her to sail. "I want to shapeshift!"

He continues staring. "Uh, why?"

"Because it would be cool!" she replies, a _duh_ embedded in every syllable. "How awesome would it be to fly? I mean, you already know how awesome it would be to fly, but I don't! And that's just not fair."

"Sure, that's not fair, but it is safe," he points out. "I've had this hook since I was really little, Moana. I know how to use it. You? Not a clue. Not even one."

"But I can't learn anything without trying it," she points out, entirely too reasonable for Maui's comfort. Ooh, they're inching into debate territory and Maui hates debating with Moana, because pretty much always wins. "How am I gonna know if I can't use it if I don't try."

"Okay, but this is a really dangerous thing to just _try_."

"How's it dangerous? I just need wings!"

"We - I have no idea if it works on mortals. I've never used it on a mortal and I'm about to - no, hush, Curly, I mean it - I'm not about to try it out on you."

Moana pouts in his direction. For about two seconds he thinks he's won, before another argument comes to her. He rolls his eyes because he can see the exact moment it occurs, lighting her entire expression.

"You were born human though," she points out excitedly, hopping up and down on the deck, "so there's no reason it shouldn't work on me! C'mon, Maui, you gotta show me how!"

"No."

"I'll just keep asking."

"I know you will. Answer's still no."

"Maui…."

"No, Moana."

"Maui," she sing-songs, drawing out his name to far more syllables than it requires. She slides along the deck, blinks mischievously up at him. "You know that you're the best demigod around."

"Flattery doesn't work on me."

"Yes it does. C'mon, Maui, heroes have to try new things! And you are, after all, the best of the best - Maui, Demigod of the Wind and Seas, Hero to All, and…Shapeshifter."

"Still no."

"Oh come on," she huffs. "I thought this was a team effort?"

Maui levels her with his best unimpressed glare. "Sailing? Yes. Shapeshifting? No."

"I've fought so many monsters with you though! It would be such a great escape tactic. You wouldn't have to stay and fight, we could just grab each other and run. Think about it."

"I'm thinking. Not any more convinced."

Moana frowns at him, and despite himself Maui feels something of remorse at the sight. He shakes the feeling off, half-angry and half-amused - this is for Moana's sake, because if he's going to try getting a mortal to shapeshift it's certainly not going to be _Moana_ he puts first up on the chopping block.

Still. This is Moana he's talking about, and she literally will not stop asking. She'd try to make herself wings, fly toward the sun alone, if she didn't have Maui to stop her.

So he sighs and concedes. "How about this," he says. "I turn myself hawk, and we go flying."

Moana's expression lights up like the sun has just risen over the horizon, suddenly all glee and excitement. "Really?" she shrieks.

"Really really," he confirms, ruefully noting how his own frustration from earlier is now entirely gone. Not a vestige of irritation left. Moana just has that effect.

"Oh my Gods!" she squeals to herself, actually vibrating on the deck of the boat. Then she leaps upward, taking him by surprise, one fist rocketing in the air. "Yes! _Yes!_ I'm gonna soar!"

Maui chuckles at her evident excitement. As she has her little victory dance atop their canoe, Maui ambles over to the prow and hefts his hook easily in one hand. Now armed, Maui turns back to Moana and finds her still kinda vibrating on the deck.

"Ready?" he calls, grinning openly.

She blinks at him, then at his hook. "What, right now?"

"Uh, do you want to wait?"

"No!" she yelps, all reservations apparently disappearing as soon as they'd come. "No, let's go now!"

Maui looks at her for a long moment, crosses his arms. His hook rests easily against his shoulder. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah!"

"This could be dangerous, Curly. If you fall off I refuse to be held responsible."

"That's fine, I won't fall off."

"You sure? Because if we don't get you back in one piece your mother's going to kill me."

Moana's turning a very interesting shade of red, almost the color of her clothes. "Yes I'm sure! We'll be all right I'll get back in one piece!"

"Really sure? Like, one-hundred percent positive sure?"

Moana looks more and more like she's about to explode. _"Maui I just want to go flying hurry up,"_ she says all in one breath like respiration is optional, and with a laugh Maui flashes his hook.

In an instant, his wings arch over the surface of the deck, the sun warm against his feathers. He gives them a contented little ruffle, feeling the wind skate through them again, then turns to Moana. She's watching him with hardly restrained excitement, hands balled like she's physically restraining herself from hopping onto his back.

Maui caws a laugh at her, and then jerks his hawk-neck sideways as best he can. "C'mon then."

With a small excited squee, Moana clambers up his shoulders and settles on his back. She shifts uncomfortably as her feet leave the relative solidity of the deck and rest instead on his sides. Moana sets her hands down lightly on his shoulders, kind of patting him awkwardly, like she's not sure where to hold on.

"You gotta get a good grip, Curly."

"Yeah. Um." She pats her hands along his back tentatively, tugging lightly on his feathers and drawing back when he winces.

"Hold the shoulder-ridges," he suggests, extending both wings so she can wrap her hands around his bones. She does so carefully.

"Does that hurt?"

"I'm in agony," he replies sarcastically.

Moana smacks him on the shoulder for that, so he guesses she couldn't have been too concerned in the first place. Then she replaces her hand on his hawk-shoulders, lies a bit lower over her back, sucks in a huge breath and lets it go. Gradually she untenses, probably commanding herself to calm down, then says "Okay" in a voice that she probably wanted to come out stronger.

He needs no further motivation. With a ferocious "Chee-huu!" Maui launches himself off the deck and into the sky, flapping his wings vigorously to gain some altitude. On his back, Moana instantly presses herself flat against him.

The ocean spirals away far below them, and Maui grins through his beak. Even he is still impressed by the sight of the ocean, looking so small yet going on forever, onto the horizon where it meets the sea. He can hardly imagine how Curly feels.

So he asks. "How's the view?"

For a solid couple seconds, he gets no response. He's about to glance back, ask again, when Moana says in a really quiet voice "it's incredible."

Heh. She's not wrong. They've hit the clouds now, and the air is brisk against his feathers, cool and refreshing. Great puffs of white float serenely past them, spraying them with pure water. There are currents like waves and clouds like islands and Maui swoops gently beneath them, aware of his flying-partner's awestruck tone.

Below them stretches the sea. Nothing but the vast infinite. From here, they can see the shadows of the clouds on the water, the sparkling of the sun, a smattering of islands out in the distance. Seaweed peppers the ocean as frequently as taro root, and off to the right an entire flock of dolphins flickers soundlessly in and out of the air. Maui's keen gaze catches sight of an enormous whale to their right, so he banks into a slow turn toward it, letting Moana take everything in.

"It's incredible," she repeats again, voice stronger. "Maui, this is amazing! Everything's so - it's so blue! And I can see the horizon, look at it! It's all around us!"

She loosens up her tight grip on his shoulders, body shifting as she looks all around them. He can almost see her awestruck gaze, eyes wide and wondering. "I thought it would be like standing on a mountain." She lets one hand fly free entirely, and moves like she's leaning backward into the breeze. "It's nothing like that. I can see _everything_. I'm staring at the clouds, Maui. I'm staring at the _clouds!_ "

Her voice swells into an ecstatic shout. She leans back close to him, right over his head, and taps at his forehead. "There's so much up here," she continues, yelling right next to his ear, "I had no idea! Maui, the wind in my hair, the sea all around me - this is fantastic! Look, there are dolphins, look at the little dolphins - and oh my Gods Maui that's a whale!" she hollers as he swoops over the surface of the sea.

He pulls right above it, mindful to descend slowly as he returns to the surface of the ocean. Moana peers over his side, ducking past his wings, teetering way too far to one side for his comfort to get a better look. "It's so big," she whispers, awestruck, and detaches one of her hands to trail her fingers closer toward it. "I can even see the little barnacles over its eyes. I've never seen one up this close!"

"Cool, isn't it?"

Moana whoops in response, long and loud, then starts laughing. It's a bubbling sound that comes right from the core of her, spilling into the air with her joy. "Let's go faster!" she suggests, creasing herself over him once more.

For a moment, Maui debates erring on the side of a caution. Then he picks up that caution and throws it to the wind. With another battle-cry, he speeds straight toward the clouds.

Moana lets out a yelp before pressing herself closer to him. At some point during his tight upward spiral she starts shouting at the clouds, a modified war-cry, and he looses a bird's call to mix with her challenges. Together they speed back toward the sky, screaming in unison.

Then he flares his wings, catching them on a gentler updraft, and flaps back into position.

"That was amazing!" Moana is breathless and grinning so wide he can hear it in her voice. He chances a glance backward to find her hair askew and her eyes lit up with the fire of discovery.

"Well," he says slowly, letting a grin curl around his own face. "You know what they say about things that come up, Moana?"

That stumps her for a couple of seconds. "They…must come - ? _Whoa!_ "

Without warning, Maui plunges back toward the sea, tucking his wings around himself and revolving tightly through his descent. Moana's yelling in some strange mixture of terror and exhilaration, and if there are words they are lost to the whistling wind that fills his ears. She's pressed tight against his back, arms wrapped around his chest for dear life.

Then, right before they both slam into the sea, Maui stretches his wings to their fullest extent. Both of them jolt with the impact of his sudden stop.

Moana lets out a whoop of joy, releasing both hands and arching into the air. "Yeah!" she hollers, punching the air with both fists. "Whoo-hoo!"

Maui shouts a cry of his own, the sound spearing out over the vast expanse ahead of them. Moana shuffles around on his back until she's lying on her stomach. "Do it again!" she demands excitedly. Her hands curl around his wings as she arches over his back. When he glances back, the wind is streaming through her hair and her eyes are narrowed toward the horizon, full of life and exuberance.

"I dunno, Curly, I'm pretty tired -"

"Let's go that way!" she suggests, ignoring him entirely. She leans over his head to point a bit to their right, straight toward the sun. "Or - no! Over there, I think I see something!"

Maui flicks his head that direction, peers outward. His hawk-vision tells him that the gray smudge is nothing but storm clouds, not the island Curly is doubtless expecting. He debates feigning actual exhaustion, then it occurs to him that hey, storm-flying might be kinda fun with someone else on his back. Sure, it'll be tough - a storm that big is nothing but huge waves, vicious winds and rain thick like falling branches. But with his wings at his side and Moana on his back, they are unstoppable.

He caws toward the sky, hears Moana's echoing whoop, and races toward the storm.


	8. Chapter 8

Prompt: Okay how about Maui and Moana having to deal a aswang that somehow made it all the way from the Philippines. It can be a threat to her island or one of their allies. Those things are creepy as heck and they're shape-shifters, would love to see how our guys deal with a another shapeshifter of a different kind.

* * *

Oh man, the aswang are creepy little buggers. They look like normal people by day, but by night they turn into their true form to hunt. They're fast, have a taste for human flesh and unborn fetuses (after eating the fetus, I believe they then kill the mother as well), and are also, of course, shapeshifters. Most of the legends around them come from the Philippines, so not too close to Motunui.

Even one of these, I think, would be exhausting to get rid of. Let's see how well this goes for our beloved dynamic duo, shall we?

* * *

It's with a heavy heart that Moana steps from the _fale_. She runs an absent forearm over her face, bowing her head, and only just remembers not to wipe at her eyes with her hands. Blood probably doesn't make the best war-paint for a peacetime Chief.

"Moana?" Maui asks, trying to look like he's strolling casually up the path toward Motunui's medical _fale_ and failing. "What happened?"

"What? Oh," she says, glancing at her hands, "that? It's not mine." It is a fair assumption - her clothes are splattered with blood from the waist down, not to even mention her hands.

"Doesn't answer my question, Curly."

"No need to get rude," she snaps, before shaking her head at herself and taking a deep breath. Calm. She has to stay calm. "Sorry. It was Tamika. She tried to deliver, and…." Moana trails off, unsure how to finish that sentence without making it sound like Tamika passed away. She swallows hard. "I mean, Tamika is fine. But her womb…her womb was empty."

Maui blinks. "Empty?"

"There was just…nothing," Moana flounders, trying her best to explain a situation she doesn't herself understand. "She did everything right, but at the end there wasn't a child. This same thing happened to Ani a couple weeks ago." Frustration roils through her. "No one knows why."

For a long moment, Maui is silent. Moana can still hear her mother comforting a grieving Tamika, voices muted from behind the _tapa_ that surround the medical _fale_. Moana shouldn't have left, shouldn't have just abandoned a grieving mother. Surely Tamika would have appreciated the support of her Chief.

But Moana just couldn't stay in that room for another second. Not with the scent of blood and death cloying so thickly in the air.

"Moana," Maui says, and his voice is curious, a far cry from the exuberance that typically holds his tone. "Do you remember what happened to Arona, three weeks ago?"

Moana blanches, wipes her hands shakily on her skirt. The longer she stands here the harder it is to ignore the feeling of blood between her fingers, beneath her nails. Normally it would be joyous, the advent of a new life, but now it just feels sickening. "Of course I do."

Arona had fallen ill and died. Quite sudden, quite mysterious. Moana would have been worried about a plague of some sorts if her corpse had not decomposed to reveal, strangely enough, wood. Bark and grass in the place of bone.

Her people had scoured the island for any sign of Arona. They had found nothing.

"That wasn't normal."

"I know."

"No, I mean…I think I know what we're dealing with," Maui says, grips his hook a bit more tightly. He's half-faced away from her, looking out toward the horizon with eyebrows knitted. "I mean I didn't think they could make it this far. They hate the ocean this far out is a long way for one to travel…but it has to be." He curses to himself, drives his hook a couple inches into the ground.

"Has to be what?"

"You ever heard of the aswang, Curly?"

Moana purses her lips. "No?"

"Wouldn't think so." Maui opens the flat of his hand toward the horizon, cutting clean through the darkness that surrounds them. "They're not from around here. Not by a long shot. I've never actually seen one, or met them face-to-face, but one's almost definitely wreaking havoc on Motunui."

"Who are they?"

"Aswang are…murderers. Baby-killers to boot," he explains, and his face twists up in disgust. "They look like people by day. Y'know, regular, ordinary villagers. Sometimes a bit quiet. But they're shapeshifters. And they don't eat food food, they eat…people."

" _People?"_

"Yeah. Mostly kids. Sometimes adults. Unborn fetuses," he continues quietly, "are a delicacy."

A strange mixture of horror and revulsion churns through her. The thought of something, anything, eating an infant…. "Why is it here?"

Maui shrugs. "Don't know. Probably needed somewhere else to feed."

Moana files that information away, struggling to keep the horrified villager Moana detached from the composed Chief who collects information and acts. Unfortunately, both parts of her really just want to bathe in the ocean and get all this blood off her, and the itching beneath her nails is making focusing difficult.

A duo of huskers passes by them, and Moana tucks her hands under her arms, relieved when they pass by her without comment, one laughing at the other's joke. Then she turns and, despite herself, Moana can't help but heed a little niggling warning, suspicion, that makes her look twice at the huskers that passed by. What if the aswang is taking the form of one of her precious villagers? How will she know? How can she get it away from her people?

"How do we get rid of it?"

Maui frowns at the question. "Chopping off the head tends to work. Uh, salt, too. And whips."

Moana winces at her options. "Anything less…violent?"

"If you're looking to get rid of it forever? No." Maui steps forward, expression falling flat as her words really register. "No - Moana, listen. You can't reason with an aswang. Maybe you could normally, they're supposed to be like…people, but just child-eating people." He shakes his head frustratedly. "Some monsters you can reason with. Not this one. It's stuck on an island and you guys are the only food source for miles."

"But - "

"Moana, listen," he says urgently, "you can't talk it out of killing. You can't sing this one down. We have to just get rid of it."

Moana drags her hand along her skirt, rubbing at her forehead with one unblemished shoulder. "I don't like that."

"I know. I know you don't. But look, Moana, you really can't mess with these guys. They're…they're shapeshifters, they can be hiding anywhere. They're fast and silent and hard to catch and if you go up against one, you can't hesitate, or someone's gonna get hurt."

"I know."

"If you hesitate," he presses, "people will die. _Your_ people."

"I know!" she snaps. "You've told me already!"

Maui's eyes widen briefly, before narrowing again. "Just wanted to make sure you were listening," he mutters.

It takes every last thread of Moana's already-thin patience to not reply again. She opts instead to whirl for the ocean, intent on getting the dead blood out from between her knuckles, the tiny cracks in her skin. "I'm getting this off of me," she calls over her shoulder, flicking a hand in his direction.

Maui's footsteps do not follow her.

* * *

There is always a solution.

From a young age, Moana knew this as a fact. If she looked hard enough, thought large enough and was clever enough, she could think her way out of any situation. Through coconut pirates and sparkling crabs and mystical lava demons, Moana knows that her mind is well-equipped to handle most any adversary.

But for this weird creature, the aswang, Moana can come up with little. The most obvious and appealing opinion would be to find it and talk to it, convince it to stop. But the aswang could not simply stop feeding - it would die.

Nor could Moana banish it. If salt truly was lethal to the aswang, exiling it over the brine-filled ocean would be a death sentence as certain as decapitation. Moana considered, briefly, sailing it away herself. But where would she drop it? Certainly not on another island nearby, or it could find its way back to Motunui. Or to another of the populated islands on their ocean. Besides, both Maui and her father would fight tooth and nail to stop her (or at least, go with her - and she refuses to risk her father, aboard a boat, on the ocean that he still fears, with a murderous aswang).

It takes her four long hours and the appearance of the rising sun against the horizon to finally concede that she won't be able to come up with a solution alone. She sighs, redresses, and heads back for Motunui.

Maui wants her to kill it and be done, so she doesn't seek counsel from him. Bathed and free of the rot-blood that came from Tamika's empty womb, Moana traces a path toward her parents' _fale_. Surely her mother or father will have sound advice.

As Moana approaches their home, three voices issue from the _fale_. She's hard-pressed to restrain the frustrated groan that builds in her throat. Great. She'd hoped to have this conversation alone, not burdened with the ever-present opportunity of _murder_ , but Maui's succinctly made that impossible.

Doing her best to control the sharp anger in her movements, she pushes back the tapestries surrounding her parents' _fale_. "Moana," her father greets.

"Dad," she replies, conjures a smile for him. "Mom."

She sits, quite pointedly, away from Maui, opting instead to wedge herself between her parents. Maybe if she just ignores him he'll run away. "I've got a bit of a problem."

"So we've heard," her mother replies gravely, nodding in Maui's direction. Moana determinedly keeps her eyes on her mother.

At least she doesn't have to explain what little she knows about the beast, she thinks, trying to force herself back into her typical optimism. The change is hard. Losing a villager, much less three, has taken a toll on her emotional and mental state.

But she can't make excuses when her people are in danger. She'll feel better once the aswang is gone.

"I'm not killing it," she says firmly, and her words are maybe a bit more biting because she knows Maui's listening. "I refuse. So I need advice on what else I can do."

There's a long, stretching silence. It reminds Moana, quite uncomfortably, of the quiet in her first council meeting, when she'd run into the _fale tele_ yelling about boats and voyaging. Of the way that shocked mutters had risen around her until finally her father had wrested the Heart from her and thrown it far away, sworn to burn those boats and her dreams of voyaging.

Moana steadfastly ignores that sensation and turns her searching attention to her parents.

"Is there a cure for its condition?" her father suggests after a time, glancing toward Maui.

"No."

"Any way to sate its hunger without…" Tui trails off, fists clenching, "…without human flesh?"

"No."

Despite herself, Moana glances toward Maui. His expression is shuttered, closed-off, but his eyes are as sharp as his words as his gaze flicks toward her.

She finds she can't hold it, so she drops her eyes toward the ground.

"Perhaps we could send it away?"

Sina's already shaking her head. "And put it where? We would only inflict our problem on someone else."

There's that pressing silence again. Moana grits her teeth against her mounting frustration. Of course, her parents no more have a solution that she does. It was stupid to even come here, hoping in vain that her parents would know what to do. She is nearly Chief, now, and it is her duty to think of solutions. To procure solutions to the impossible.

She can do this. There is a solution. If Moana thinks for long enough, it will come to her.

"We could kill it."

Jolted from her train of thought, Moana glares at Maui. Her first and _only_ stipulation on proposed solutions was the lack of homicide, and now that Maui has spoken he's blown that one requirement out of the water. "No."

"There's no other way."

"Yes there is!"

"Then what is it? What's your solution, _Chief_?"

Moana flounders wordlessly for a moment, shame and grief and irritation mounting in her throat. She can do little but glare mutely at him.

He throws his hands in the air. "Look, Moana, if you've got a better solution then I'd love to hear it. But the facts are that you need this thing off your island and you can't do that unless you get rid of it."

"I'm not going to kill it!"

"Then what are you going to do, Moana?" he shouts, leaning forward intensely.

"I don't know yet!" she yells right back, forgetting her parents momentarily as she latches onto anger with both hands. That, at least, is easier to feel than frustration. "I just need a bit more time -"

"You don't have time, Moana!" He gestures, short and quick, to the rest of the village. "Someone died two weeks ago and a child was killed today. You have no idea when the aswang will come for the next, and your indecision could end up costing lives!"

Moana recoils from his words. Despite the tension thrumming through the air of the fale Moana can feel the sun beating overhead, inching inexorably toward the horizon.

She hates his words because he's right and she knows it. But admitting that means admitting defeat and she refuses, she refuses to kill. It was not the way of her ancestors and it is certainly not hers.

"I can figure something out, Maui!"

"When? Are you going to be able to come up with it, implement it all tonight? Or are you going to risk your peoples' lives for your own stubbornness, your - your _pride?_ "

" _How dare_ -"

"Enough." Tui's voice is sharp and clear as it cuts through her enraged reply. "Maui, you cross a line. Moana, _pele_ , he is right. These creatures strike at night, and already the sun rises to its peak."

Moana turns from the conversation, furious. Beneath the cover of her rage she's smarting - he's right but she hates it. Her pride and her anger, ugly heads rearing, sew her mouth shut and cross her arms over her chest. Moana keeps her chin lifted, slamming her warrior face into place and pretending that her eyes are not stinging in their sockets.

How dare he. What does he know of leading? What does he know of commanding the lives of dozens of people? Maui thinks for himself and himself alone and he would not know humility if it were engraved on his precious fishhook.

"What measures can be used to repel these beasts?" Tui asks in the background, turning his attention from Moana to Maui.

Moana can feel Maui's eyes on her, but she ignores him resolutely. "Salt," he replies, voice cool and unruffled, a far cry from his enraged yells of earlier. "You can use knives to cut off their heads. They're also scared of whips."

"Salt's not feasible," Sina weighs in. "We have no vast supplies save the ocean, and water does not a weapon make."

"Uh-huh. And knives aren't too effective, not for you anyway. Most aswang are supposedly way too fast for mortal reflexes." There's a shifting against the ground. "I'll take one when we go hunting for the beast. You should get yourself some whips, though. The noise will scare 'em off."

"Very well." A gentle hand creeps onto her knee, and though it is her father who speaks the hand is small enough to belong only to her mother. "Thank you for your aid, Maui."

A snort. "Of course, Chief. Always happy to help."

Maui lets out a small grunt as he heaves himself to his feet. Moana feels distinctly like she should say something, anything, but the blood is still pounding in her ears and blocking out anything she might say. She can feel her eyes on him and she lifts her chin in response, gaze tethered to the _tapa_ that surround her.

"Wait," her mother calls, reclaiming her hand to fold them in her lap. "Maui, what should these whips be made of?"

Silence again. It stretches and thins uncomfortably, slicing through the buzzing in Moana's ears. Despite herself Moana looks back toward Maui, catches him watching her.

Then, quietly, like Maui's not quite sure how to put the thought to words, he says "Manta ray tail."

Moana finds herself on her feet before she knows what she's doing. "Absolutely not."

"Moana -"

"No! We are not turning - we are not turning any part of a manta ray into a _weapon_!"

"You have to, they're your only defense."

"No! Manta rays guide us and protect us and I will not allow them to be used to deal death."

"You have no choice!" Maui roars, eyes alight and furious. "You aren't fast enough with a knife and there's nothing else that will work against them. I know it's terrible, Moana, but if we don't do this then your people will die!"

"These rays are sacred to my people!"

"No, they're sacred to their Chief!"

"They are revered by all of us, except you!"

"Okay, so what's more important to you, Moana," he hisses, face inches from her own, "your dead grandmother or your actual _living, breathing people_?"

Fury rises in her so quickly that she chokes on it. But before she can manifest any of it into words, Maui turns sharply and exits the _fale_ , leaving her to simmer.

Her whole body is shaking and she feels like she's diving, deep beneath the ocean, painful pressure on every part of her. She becomes aware that she's crying but there's nothing of grief in her, just furious tears that shudder violently out of her. Part of her is incredulous, disbelieving, because there are some lines that are not crossed and Maui has leaped and landed solidly on the other side.

The rest of her is mostly just mad.

The itch of blood on her hands returns to her like a phantom pain, like a needle stabbing through her skin. Without another word, she turns and strides from the _fale_ down toward the shore, leaving her parents in mute disappointment behind her.

* * *

As it is wont to do, the ocean soothes her. Takes her grief and her anger and her frustration with its tranquility until her heartbeat slows, falls once more in line with the waves along the shore. Moana yells, screams out at the horizon for long thin minutes, until she settles into exhaustion.

For a long, uncountable while, Moana slumps on the shore. Stares up at the clouds. In times like these there is little she wants more than to sail away, to forget her problems in the joy of exploring. But this isn't a luxury afforded to Chiefs.

For her people, she has to decide.

And he's right, Moana concludes, after a disgracefully long time. Maui is right - she has no option but to kill.

Moana allows herself five minutes to grieve before pulling herself to her feet. Tired as she is, it's little trouble to slip a calm exterior over her face, like slipping beneath the surface of the ocean. She treks wearily toward the fishermen.

However, there must be something of exhaustion on her face - at least, more so than she intended - because when she tells them to cast their nets further offshore, to search out manta rays, they do not ask questions.

Now the sight of the sea sickens her. Already, before the aswang has even been caught, there is the blood of Motunui's rays on her hands.

On the small of her back, the tattoo of a manta ray burns with shame.

* * *

Though Moana's hands are more accustomed to knotting than her parents', she lets her mother fasten their whips. The manta ray tails have been meticulously cleaned, doubtless with their Chief's mental state in mind, but despite the lack of blood Moana cannot bring herself to touch them.

It is wrong. This is wrong. This whole escapade sits wrong in her gut. Still the feeling remains that there is a solution because there _must_ be, but for the life of her Moana cannot think of any remedy.

Over their heads, the sun sets.

With the tails harvested, it is short work to fashion the whips in full. Sina finishes hers first, hands more accustomed to knotting the ropes of their canoes than Tui's, and tests it with a few short cracks that make Moana flinch before setting about making one for her daughter.

As they work, they explain that Maui has spent his day among the people of Motunui. Most do not know that they four are aware of the aswang's presence. He has spent his time conversing with every single villager. According to his knowledge of legend, the presence of an aswang can be detected if his reflection in the aswang's eyes is inverted.

Tui steps outside to test the feel of his whip in his hand. Moana rests her head against her mother's shoulder and tries not to think about how, without Maui and without her parents, she might have damned them all.

Her mother remains wordlessly supportive as she works, leaning her head briefly against the top of Moana's own. Sina does not speak, waiting for Moana to broach the topic. But Moana refrains. She doesn't want to talk about it, not really. Tomorrow there will be time.

Some short time afterward, the occasional cracks of her father's new whip stops. A second voice joins with her father's in a muted undertone. Sina binds the last of the knot with a flourish, testing it again for balance, and passes the handle to Moana.

For a long moment, Moana considers it tiredly. Every instinct, every part of her that loves her grandmother is screaming at her to push it away. Bile rises in her throat and she nearly rejects the offer, goes to grab her knife instead. But Moana scrubs an exhausted palm across her face, forcibly shoves her emotions to the deepest recesses of her mind and takes the whip without a hint of feeling crossing her face.

Ice withstands pressure much better than water. So Moana buries herself.

Sina exits the _fale_ , and Moana stands, whip in hand. It feels awkward and wrong in her grip, and she longs for her oar, but Moana pushes that down too, follows suit.

Maui and her father are waiting for her. Both turn to her. Her father holds her gaze. Maui looks away.

"It is Tamika," Tui says gravely. "Alone among the villagers, Maui saw himself inverted in her eyes."

"Plan is," Maui says, pulling a knife from his _'ie_ , the blade comically small in his hand, "wait for night to fall. The aswang will shift its form and start hunting." He frowns toward the sky. "A couple things to know beforehand - they make noise. Little clicks." Maui clicks his tongue to demonstrate. "A bit like sticks rapping together. Thing is, the louder they are the farther away the aswang is. The quieter, the closer it is. When you can't hear the aswang anymore, you're in trouble. Got it?"

A solemn murmur of assent from Moana's parents. "Good. Second: remember, this guy's a shapeshifter. He's fast and quiet, so once we get near 'im he'll be a challenge to take down. Keep your eyes on him and don't look away. If you don't have to blink, don't. Otherwise you'll lose track of him.

"We'll split up, two and two. Sina, you and I will sweep around the right side of the island," Maui suggests, glancing in her direction, "Tui, you and your daughter head leftward. We'll meet on the far side. When the aswang's in range - "

"No," Tui intervenes crisply. "Sina and I will stay together. It is better for you and Moana to fight as one."

"With all due respect, Chief - "

"Remember your promise, demigod," Moana's father says, and though his voice remains light there is steel in his tone.

Moana shoots a confused glance toward her father, but her father's not looking at her. Instead, he's pinning Maui down with a frightening gaze. After a long moment, during which Maui and Tui seem to be at odds about some indiscernible…thing, Maui shrugs his shoulders and relents.

"Fine," he says quietly. "Sina and Tui, you go together. If you find the aswang, get out of range immediately.

"One of each pair will take bows. Head the other direction, and once you're clear and can't hear it anymore, light the tip and fire an arrow straight up. And for the love of the Gods make sure that the clicks drop off abruptly. If they start fading, you're getting closer."

The first of the stars twinkle into view as Moana looks upward. Despite herself her grip on the whip tightens, adrenaline already thrumming through her veins. Of all the beasts she has fought, never before as she encountered a shapeshifter. Typically she fights alongside one, not against one, and Moana's seen firsthand how hard it is to withstand the attacks of an enemy who can change form from smaller than her finger to larger than her canoe in less time than a blink.

Without another word, her parents peel off from the _fale_ , sharing one determined look before heading toward the far side of the island. There is nothing of fear in their gazes, and it strikes Moana suddenly just how old her parents are. Just how much they have seen, how they have fought for Motunui for years and years before she was born.

Their courage gives her strength. Moana strides in the opposite direction.

For a being so large, Maui moves quietly. It is easy for Moana to pick her way silently through the trees because she is light and her feet are small and the forest speaks to her in a language almost akin to that of the ocean - but it is like Maui is a wraith, passing through the trees without disturbing so much as a blade of grass.

For the first time in a long while, Moana remembers her grandmother's legends of Maui. Maui was a warrior and a shapeshifter, clever and quiet. She tends to forget how he snuck through Te Fiti, past Mahuika to steal her flame. This Maui is so different from the Maui she knows, the one full of boisterousness and energy, and though she's actively trying not to look his direction it takes her several glances to reconcile the two, remind herself that yes, the two are the same.

The sky darkens fully overhead. Now the stars are stark against the black of the sky, shining in tiny pinpricks visible even through the overhead canopy of the trees. Moana subconsciously follows a scarce-travelled path toward the back of the island, ears straining for any hint of noise. Step after step after step she takes, losing herself in every rustle of the trees, heart jolting at every errant noise.

She does not know how much time passes. This far into the dense forests of Motunui, with the darkness overhead and on the ground and obscuring the trunks, Moana feels unnerved on her own island. It is only the stars that glitter above her head that point her back toward her beloved village.

The first click startles her so badly that she nearly screams.

Beside her, Maui shifts warily, deepening his stance. Without sparing her so much as a sideways glance, he draws his bow and nocks an arrow to the string.

Moana raps the side of his palm with her elbow. Again the click sounds, thrumming loudly through her ears, and it takes every ounce of self-control that she possesses not to whirl in a panic toward the sound. It sounds so close, like the aswang is _right beside her_.

"No," she hisses, voice nearly inaudible.

Maui arches an incredulous eyebrow in her direction, a bit of hostility creasing his face.

"We can take it." She gives the handle of her whip a little twitch, convincing herself that the nausea that roils through her is exhaustion alone. "Don't call them, we don't need their help."

Maui lowers the bow, slowly, his fixed gaze never leaving her face. She returns it evenly, struggling to keep a calm front despite the heartbeat pounding in her ears. Another click sounds, this time from behind her, and Moana jumps a little bit before realizing what she's done.

"If you find the aswang," he says, voice low and controlled, "will you kill it?"

She can think of no other alternative. Finally, that last bit of hope that Moana had clung to - that she will find a solution in time - flickers and dies.

"Yes."

The bow drops completely to his side. He looks at her for a long time, assessing her, and it makes her deeply uncomfortable. It's the look of a warrior but it's not a mask, it's calculating and _cold_.

Then he must find whatever he's looking for because without another word, he strides past her.

Moana exhales a shaky breath, trying to feel triumph through the welling panic in her veins. She shakes her head at herself, tightens her grip around her whip, and sneaks after Maui.

With the clicks, their progress becomes faster and faster. There's little need for coordination between the two of them - without conscious thought she takes two steps for every one of his, a perfect drumming sound against the ground. She keeps her whip tucked beneath her shoulder, ignoring the way the rubbery skin rubs against her underarm. Maui's knife is tucked easily into his palm, blade resting calmly against his skin.

The clicks have dimmed to a soft sound, like the sound of a fist rapping on the wood supporting her _fale_ , when she and Maui catch sight of a woman alone on the shore.

It's Tamika. Moana can tell this much, even from a distance. She looks different, though - more than just the notable absence of her belly. She carries herself different, her shoulders a bit straighter and her chin a bit higher off the ground.

Behind her, the ocean crashes and roils.

At her side, Maui shifts his hook in one hand, turning it absently with one thumb, drawing the hilt of his knife into his hand. She takes a deep breath, pulls her whip in front of her, and for the first time that day they exchange glances.

With a ferocious roar, Maui hurls himself from the treeline. Moana follows half a heartbeat afterward, still unused to the feeling of the whip in her hands. Tamika turns toward them at the sound. It is too dark to make out most of her face, but Moana can see fear in her eyes.

The sight stops her in her tracks. Tamika jolts out of Maui's way, looking up at him as he thunders down from the ground like she doesn't know why he's here. It's with an impressive shake of the ground that Maui slams downward, hook slamming into the sand.

"Moana?" Tamika calls, and Moana freezes because it sounds just like her. It sounds just like Tamika. "Moana, what's happening?"

And for the first time, Moana doubts. Maybe she's seeing things, maybe she's seeing only what she expected to see. New mothers, Moana remembers with a jolt, do stand taller, relieved of the weight of their child - perhaps -

"Moana, you promised," Maui reminds her, pulling his hook from the ground with a grunt of effort.

"But -" Moana protests, still looking at Tamika and seeing the woman who pulled Heihei out of his nest when Moana was little more than three years old. "Maybe - Tamika, are you -"

Behind her, Maui narrows his eyes and throws himself forward. Tamika, hearing the back end of his cry, stumbles out of the way. Now there is definitely terror in her eyes, and a horrible confusion tears at Moana's heart.

What if Maui is wrong?

"We do not have time for this, Moana!" he says, and there's real anger in his voice, just like in her parents' _fale_. It's sharp and bitter and lashes across her shoulders. "You promised you wouldn't hesitate!"

She hesitates still, doubt slowing her movements. An undeniable look of disappointment, deep and harrowing, crosses Maui's face before it becomes expressionless once more. Behind him, Tamika skitters away from him, that terrified expression still on her face.

Maui straightens a bit, looks disdainfully at Tamika, then back toward Moana. With Tamika between them he flicks his hook back toward the forest. "Get out, Moana."

"What?"

"I said get out! If you're not going to fight then _leave!_ "

"I'm not going anywhere!"

"I don't want you here." He turns from her pointedly. Tamika, who had been scuttling farther down the shoreline, watching them cautiously, freezes. "I can't trust you to have my back, so I don't want to have to look after you. Get out."

"Maui -" Moana tries, but Maui is gone.

He catapults through the air, and Tamika dodges at the last moment. Moana sprints after him, tracking the huge cloud of sand that had plumed into the air beneath his feet. She shuts her eyes against it, races through it to find Maui and Tamika standing off on the other side - Maui sharp and angry on one, Tamika frightened and defenseless on the other.

"Maui?" Tamika pleads, voice cracking, and Maui does not so much as flinch. "Maui, I don't understand - I thought -"

He cuts her off with a tremendous yell, and too fast for Moana's eyes to follow, cleaves through the air with his knife.

Even faster, Tamika dives out of the way.

Too fast.

She flicks out of the way too quickly, and as she goes Moana catches the smallest hint of a sharp smirk on her face and her stomach drops. She's not human. There is no human that could move so quickly. But when Moana raises her whip, Tamika is gone.

In her ears flutters the quiet sound of clicking.

Moana pivots on the beach, scouring the sand for any sign of the aswang. She wastes a couple of seconds peering along the shore, desperately searching for any animal that could seem out-of-place. Maui, several feet away, does the same.

Something flashes in the corner of her vision. Too late to warn him, she spies a beetle fluttering by Maui's ear. Instinct propels her arm out and forward, cracking the whip with a clamoring strike against the ground. The sound cracks clearly through the air, spilling out across the beach, and the beetle wobbles a bit in mid-air before flitting some distance away.

"Are you okay?" she breathes, adrenaline hot and heavy in her veins, stumbling toward Maui, "the aswang - she -"

"I'm fine." Maui doesn't look at her; instead, he turns his back. The tattoo of Te Ka stands out in stark relief beneath the moonlight, of himself cast into the ocean and abandoned. "I thought I told you to get out of here, Moana."

"No," Moana refuses firmly. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Where was your conviction when we got here?" he demands, glare piercing through her. "Are you convinced? Now are you sure I know what I'm doing?"

Moana flinches a bit at the biting reprimand clear in his tone, then shakes her head at herself. "Yes."

He scoffs, but says nothing more.

She should be looking for the aswang, she knows, but Moana just feels kind of sick. It's not nervousness before battle, Moana knows that feeling well, this is something new and different and it gets worse whenever her gaze lands on the tattoos on Maui's back.

She shakes her head furiously at herself. She'll deal with him later. For now, her people are in danger, and she has to focus.

With that thought held firmly in mind, she turns her attention outward once more. At her side the waves rail furiously against the shore. The cacophony beats against her ears, throwing her pulse off-kilter, however she tries to ignore it.

Too many tense seconds trickle by. Despite herself Moana runs through a mental list of the transformations the aswang could assume - beetle is by far the most likely, both small and airborne, so she skims at the sky.

Then, suddenly, Maui flings himself forward, past her. Moana pivots to find Maui grappling with a huge boar. It's easily three times his size, but he's got both hands planted on its shoulders as it digs its feet into the soft sand, trying to run him over. Moana leaps across the beach and lashes out toward its shoulders. She misses, the movement still unaccustomed and clumsy, but it strikes the sand with an audible enough noise. With a panicked grunt, the boar demorphizes.

It does not return to a human form.

Moana recoils physically from this…this creature. It's little more than a black mass lying prone on the ground, eyeing her whip in something akin to fear. There's this huge tubelike _thing_ sticking out of its face. Moana can't tear her eyes away from it, this unnatural protrusion that looks like a spear, nearly half the size of the aswang itself.

Hardly has she processed the image when it vanishes again, and Moana catches the tail end of a small beetle scuttling into the sand.

She swallows hard on a bile-filled retch. It's a disgusting, horrifying image, and Moana's hands shake as she lifts the handle of her whip again. Her eyes smart reflexively as she scans the shore, the ocean still writhing on her right, peering in vain into the darkness for any sign of the beast.

In the sudden silence, Moana becomes once more aware of the clicks still sounding in her ears. They're still quiet, keeping Moana's nerves strung out and tense, but Moana can see nothing. For what seems like years she keeps her head moving, peering toward the forest, eyes straining to make out the smallest shape out of place.

Something splashes in the waves, something out of place, something out of tempo. Moana turns, whip unfurled and ready, and her grandmother stands before her.

"Moana," says her grandmother's voice with her grandmother's lips.

Moana stumbles backward, eyes wide. Her whole body feels as though it's been filled with lead, like her fingers are made of stone, and the whip drops to her side. For a couple of seconds she stands there, just choking on air, trying to convince her lungs to work again.

"How could you do this, Moana?" Her grandmother looks upset, disappointed, and Moana's heart breaks a little. "I thought I was precious to you," Tala says, voice cracking, looking at Moana like Moana had killed her herself. "I thought you loved me."

All of the sudden, Moana wants to drop the whip. How could she have let this happen, how could she have allowed her grandmother's legacy to be so tarnished, and there's a very small part of Moana's mind is screaming at her to get out of the way, but it's oddly muted. Quiet. Like the thoughts are not Moana's own.

Even as the aswang shifts from her grandmother, her beloved grandmother to a boar Moana can't move, can't get through the emotionally-charged panicked fog clouding her brain, can do little but stand and watch as the boar races toward her. Its tusks are sharp and pointed as the aswang barrels straight toward her, something like a victorious grin already creasing the corners of its mouth. Detached, Moana watches it sprint toward her, its pale eyes glinting -

Something lands directly on its tusks.

Moana can hardly recognize it as Maui, eyes narrowed in fury and hatred, before the boar flicks its face and sends him tumbling into the sea. He swipes with his hook, trying to catch himself on one of its tusks, but he's moving too quickly. Moana has just enough time to see fear flit across his face as he realizes that nothing lies below him save ocean before he plummets into the water.

"No!" Moana screams, jerking forward despite herself.

The boar melts away, becomes Tala again. It clears its throat once, twice, then strolls between Moana and the sea. The gait is wrong, there's no tired stumble in its step, and though there are wrinkles on the aswang's face there is none of the age.

This is not her grandmother. _This is not her grandmother._

"Oh dear," it says, its sweet voice clear and beautiful and full of glistening cruelty, so unlike Tala's warm words. "I'm afraid you've just lost another villager."

Never before has Moana felt so awake. Now, instead of fogged and confused, her thoughts are sharp and crystal. In an instant a plan falls into place, clicking together as smoothly as the scales on a fish, and Moana clamps down on her emotions with a snap.

She raises the hilt of her whip and cracks it downward furiously.

The aswang, caught off guard, cowers for a brief moment, and the Tala's body bubbles like it's trying to recede into the sand. But before it can shift, Moana cracks it again, startling it right out of its transformation.

As the aswang backs up, Moana takes a step forward. In slow, decisive movements, fury lending cool strength to her arms, Moana doubles the tail over the hilt and cracks it again. The thicker cord makes the sound echo off the waves, and the aswang flinches, looking around itself before back to Moana.

In that time, Moana has shoved her face directly in its own. "Out," she grits, and with another flick strikes the aswang's arm. It lets out an incoherent yelp, a sort of burble of alarm, and tries to recede into the ground. She lashes out again, catching it mid-transformation, and it becomes its tall thin black form that Moana suspects is how it truly looks. "Get off of my island."

Again Moana drives the whip into the sand. It retreats. She strikes. Again and again she snaps her whip downward, preventing the aswang from transforming with a callousness that surprises even her. Even now there is a small muted part of Moana's mind that is panicking because Maui is _drowning_ but her rage matches with the ocean and she will not stop until this aswang, this aswang that has taken her grandmother's face and dared to tarnish her legacy is nothing more than foam on the sea's breeze.

"You have no place here," she hisses, wrist chafing where the handle of the whip screams against it. "You have brought nothing with you but ruin and I will not hesitate to smite you for this!"

The aswang tries to slip around her Moana has speed enough to cut it off every single time. She continues forward relentlessly, as furious as the sea, driving the aswang farther away from her.

Moana knows the exact moment the aswang realizes what she's doing. It shrieks in fear, stumbling sideways as though that can save it from the ever-advancing surf, but its fear gives Moana cruel strength and she drives the whip right into its chest, wrapping the tail around its shoulders.

It moves to transform, eyes wide with the panic that death alone can instill, but Moana jerks the whip and sends it sprawling backward.

With a roar, the ocean surges forward to claim it.

An unearthly screaming fills the air, the dying throes of the aswang shattering atop the waves. It is a horrible sound, one that grates across Moana's ears, but she faces the ocean without a hint of remorse.

Finally, the aswang sinks below the surface of the ocean and does not move.

Moana stands alone at the shore, breathing heavily. Her arm aches and her palm is dry and her skin is cracked -

 _Maui._

Suddenly she is alight again. The weariness that had begun to spread through her limbs dissipates under her sudden panic, sharper and more painful than even the sight of her grandmother's face, and before Moana can really come up with a plan she dives into the water.

The ocean's waves are brutal. There is nothing of kindness, of gentleness, in its arms. It lashes against her face, driving salt into her nose and eyes and ears, nearly blinding her. Moana strains forward against it, shoving herself further into the tumultuous seas. Her lungs burn and she surfaces, straining for breath, and pokes her head out above the waves.

In front of her, a dark shadow floats atop the waves.

In an instant Moana plunges back beneath the water. The waves roil around her, tossing her from side to side, plunging her right and left and downward. Moana struggles ceaselessly through it, slipping between the currents with nothing more than the fire in her arms and the desperate panic in her heart.

Moana ducks under the churning sea, seeking calmer currents toward the bottom of the sand. As if seeking her weakness an errant wave latches around her foot and slams her downward, driving one of her heels painfully into a wedge of coral.

When she looks up, looks around herself from beneath the surface of the waves, she sees Maui floating senselessly atop the waves.

The desperation that tears its way through her makes short work of the coral binding her in place with a sharp jab of her heel. In another moment she is free, straining upward toward him, and she surfaces next to him with heaving gasps.

Moana goes to call his name, but the words are lost to the spray off the wind and the salt sticks in her throat. For two long seconds she gags, trying to breathe and reaching toward Maui in equal measure. She sucks in huge breaths, prying away the salt crusted around her throat, and as soon as she latches onto Maui's arm she gulps in the foul ocean air.

But there is no time to worry about her own breath because Maui draws none. She mutters a quick soundless prayer to any deities who could be watching her and strings Maui's arm over her shoulder.

Making her way back toward the shore is easier than sliding out, and though the waves force the duo underwater far too often at least the currents push them shoreward. Moana's legs ache with the effort of heaving them both toward land, trying furiously to keep both of them afloat. Even atop the waves, Maui is not light, and on several occasions Moana finds her ankles yanked out from beneath her as she tries to push him too far out of the water.

Though it seems an eternity, Moana drags them both, dripping, to shore.

Her hair straggles thickly around her head as she drops to her elbows and knees, straining desperately for breath. But despite the panicked shaking in her arms, every single one of her survival instincts pressing her toward the ground, Moana drags herself over to Maui.

It's slow going. Her right ankle was shredded by the seafloor, and the injury weeps salt like tears. Even still the ocean's surf pounds behind her.

"Maui?" she calls, coughs, tries to dispel the ache in her chest. It feels like there are hands pressing around her throat but as she raises a hand there's nothing there but seawater and raised skin. "Maui?"

For a long second, he does not move. Then he twitches on the sand, and his eyes blink open.

"Maui!" she exclaims, relief flooding through her limbs so fast that they tremble, and she curls at his side in an instant, propping him upright. He's shaking too as he heaves with racking coughs, trying to expel all the water from his lungs. She wraps a steady arm around his shoulders, keeping him upright, the other hand pressed against his chest. "Oh thank the Gods," she babbles, even though he probably can't understand her, "you're okay I thought…" her voice trails off and breaks again.

"Moana?" he croaks, blinking rapidly.

And just like that, she's crying again. "It's me, I'm so sorry, Maui," she breathes, grip tightening around his side, "I shouldn't have - I didn't listen and you almost - I'm so sorry," she hiccups, breaths rasping painfully across her throat. The salt in her windpipe makes it really hard to speak. "I was so tired and I didn't know what was happening and you almost _died_ , I'm so sorry, I just saw Gramma - Gramma Tala and I couldn't move, and…thank the Gods you're okay, I can't…."

He looks up at her, and the longer he looks the further his expression falls. He pushes himself onto his elbows, steadfastly ignoring her offer to help. Moana bites down on the urge to wrap her arms around his shoulder, to help him upward because he's wincing and is in pain but he still won't look at her, expression closed and stoic.

"What happened to the aswang?"

"I…I drove it into the sea," she admits, gaze flicking from the ground to his face. "Maui, I'm really sorry, I just…I thought…."

"You thought what? _What_ did you think, Moana?"

She flinches physically from the anger in his tone. She can still kind of hear her grandmother's disappointed voice ringing in her ears, Maui's panicked yell as he realized that he was headed straight for the ocean, but she shoves it aside to deal with later. "I thought I could help it," she replies quietly.

"Even though I told you that you could not."

Moana balls her hands into fists at her side, feeling the sand scrape against the blisters on her wrists. "Yeah."

Maui tenses his legs beneath himself, pulls himself to his feet. His silhouette against the sky is familiar and panic shoots through Moana so badly that she chokes on it, completely unable to form words. She shakes her head desperately, stumbling to her feet.

"Maui?" she pleads, reaching for his arm but stopping inches from his tattoos.

His hook is half-raised at his side. Even though it's dark out, the moon casts the tiniest glimmer of light on his face, illuminating the anger and barely-controlled rage stark on every feature. For a heart-stopping second Moana thinks of Te Ka.

No. No, he promised he wouldn't leave again he _promised her_ but he's standing there with his shoulders hunched and his hook in both hands like it's cracking like _he's_ cracking and before she can talk herself out of it begs "Please don't go."

For a long moment, Maui does not move. For once she can read nothing off his face, nothing but the tension evident in every line of his shoulders. The silence stretches on, and on, and on.

Then he exhales, long and quiet, and drops his hook on the ground.

Moana releases a shuddering breath. She stays still, not sure what to do, until Maui turns to face her. His expression is completely blank and Moana's not sure which is worse, anger or this unsettling nothing. Then he regards her for a long second, the tears still wet on her face, and sits on the shore.

Heart in her chest, Moana sits next to him, folding herself stiffly into the sand. "I'm sorry," she says again, because she doesn't know what else to say.

"I know." His gaze is turned out toward the horizon, blank but somehow not. Then he sighs, cards a hand through his hair. "Me too."

"What? Why?"

"I didn't listen to you either."

"I wasn't doing much except being obstinate," she points out, willing her pounding heart to calm. He's still here, he hasn't left, and though she's not sure what's happening he is trying to apologize.

"Because you didn't want to do this," he replies, gesturing vaguely toward the sea. "That much was obvious, and I didn't listen. You didn't want to fight the aswang, and I yelled over you until you agreed. I'm sorry."

Moana takes a deep, steeling breath. "It's okay."

And it is, she thinks. As long as he is still here, not flapping off and away, it will be okay.

"Thank you."

He snorts acerbically at her. "What, for not leaving?"

"No." Moana frowns at him, punches him in the shoulder. "I mean, that was kinda scary, but that's not what I'm saying thank you for. Thank you for helping Motunui, and telling me what I needed to hear. Even when I was too stubborn to listen."

This time it's his turn to shrug awkwardly. "No problem. That's what I do best, after all," he says, and his tone is biting. "Drop everything to help when humans ask for it."

She probably deserves the bitterness in his tone. He sighs then, tired and suddenly old, like thousands of years of living have finally caught up to him.

For a long while, Moana keeps her gaze trained out toward the sea. It's probably just a figment of her imagination, her fanciful mind filling in blanks where there are none, but Moana almost sees a dark patch on the waves, roiling farther and farther out into the ocean. Like the aswang's finally headed back where it came from.

Moana wraps her arms around her knees. Now that the fight is over, the battle finally won, the image of the manta rays strewn along one of their groves, tails being meticulously removed, seems like it's burned into Moana's mind. And it was not her grandmother, she knows this, but the aswang's voice had sounded so much like Tala. Their boundaries are kinda blurring, overlapping, and there's a brief moment of panic where Moana can't recall her grandmother's voice and hears Tamika's crystal cling instead.

Beside her Maui shifts uncomfortably in the sand. "Your grandmother was a storyteller, right?" he asks, snapping her with a small jolt from her reverie. She blinks a bit, reacclimating to this shore and the first watery rays of light peering over the horizon, and regains the presence of mind enough to nod.

"Yeah."

With a series of motions that are almost tentative, he tilts his head toward her. "What stories did she tell? I mean, um…well, which one was your favorite?"

Her locket clinks against her collarbone as she looks incredulously toward him. Sure, Maui's still holding himself kinda stiffly and his shoulders are tense, but better awkwardness than anger.

It occurs to her, suddenly, that telling this story through the voice of her grandmother would help her forget Tamika's distorted tones.

With a sigh, Moana opens her mouth, settles more comfortably on the shore. "My favorite? Well," she pauses, then chuckles. "It was the one about you."

"About me?"

"Yeah." She smiles at him, kinda subdued and kinda uncertain, but a smile all the same. "Do you, uh, want to hear it?"

Maui shrugs, that tension finally dissipating as he leans back against the sure. "Eh, why not. Hit it."

Just like that, the voice of her grandmother fills her mind, warm and soothing. Over their horizon the sun rises fully, bathing the shore in light, and Moana thinks for a brief moment to that day. When the ocean first chose her.

"In the beginning," she says, a tired grin playing around her lips as she bumps her shoulder against his, "there was only ocean."

* * *

Notes:

The promise that Tui was referring to was, in my headcanon, one that Maui made to him toward the beginning of him and Moana's friendship. Y'know, about when Maui first hits Motunui. Tui and Sina were probably very uncomfortable with the idea of their daughter adventuring with a demigod, so I imagine that at one point, Tui comes to Maui, not as Chief, and asks him to protect her. So when he refers to it again in-conversation, he's basically going "Moana is a trouble-magnet and you will go with her to protect her, you work better as a team."

So then, when Maui tells Moana to leave, he's basically saying "you're so incompetent that I can't protect you, you're a burden to me right now." Ouch.

(but on the flipside it's a lot easier for maui to protect moana in his human form rather than a shifted form isn't it)

Also, part of the reason that Maui and Moana's argument escalated so darn quickly is because Moana's super tired. Two of her villagers have died in two weeks and she has no idea why. Then figuring out she has to kill something, and _then_ realizing that she has to use parts of a manta ray to do it…yeah, she's not in a good place.


	9. Chapter 9

Prompt: I've had this idea in my head that during a battle Maui is injured and Moana in her desire to protect him somehow gets his Hook to work of her and she uses it to save him and herself?

* * *

i'll find any way to stick in these two idiots each other over themselves, i swear, i will

A side note: there's no way that Moana would be able to wield Maui's hook in regular battle. We've seen her try to pick it up in-movie, and it's just not feasible - it's way too heavy. Strong though Moana is, she's not a demigod like her best friend. She's definitely got limits. So I kinda worked around it. I'm guessing you wanted BAMF!Moana, so BAMF!Moana's what you're gonna get. :)

A couple of brief notes before jumping in. In the original draft of the movie, Moana and Maui were going to travel to the Underworld instead of Lalotai. The Underworld was to be a place of dead spirits, whose gravity made everything a lot heavier than it would have been in the mortal world.

Also, according to legend, Maui works a lot with birds in his tricks and schemes. I won't go into detail here about the legends, but if you're curious about what sorts of escapades he gets up to look up his (mis)adventure with Te Po.

* * *

"There's another one," Moana says, leaning off the canoe to grab the bird out of the water. Just like the other three, there is nothing visibly wrong with it - no injuries, no torn limbs. Just a dead bird floating in the water. Maui leaps off the mast, thumping onto the deck behind her.

"How is the _piwakawaka_ doing this?" she asks, setting it gently on the deck. She's not sure what to do with it or the other three, so she just kinda lays them out until she works out what to do. "It's just a giant bird, right?"

"Yeah." Maui frowns at their pile of birds, sits on the deck. "My guess would be some outside influence. Divinity of some sort."

"So you think it was Saveasi'uleo?"

"Couldn't've been. Elo's domain only goes so far. We're out of his range now. This far out, it's, uh..." Maui trails off. "Do you remember Tawhiti?"

Moana blinks, caught off-guard by the question. She folds her hair over her shoulder, eyes narrowing as she trails through her mental map of the islands. Oh, yeah. "Yeah, I remember them. We're not too far off from Tawhiti, come to think of it."

"Yeah. You remember their gods?"

"Mostly?" She leans back on her palms, letting her gaze travel toward the sky. "I remember Maru and Rongo. We didn't have too much time to exchange legends though."

Maui waves a dismissive hand in her direction. "Close enough. Basically, the gods only span a part of the islands. The islands you've discovered except Tawhiti follow Te Fiti, Tilafaiga, Taema, the ones you grew up with. But out here there's a whole different pantheon. There's still Tagaloa, though he's called Tangaroa, since he made literally everything - but Mahuika, she's from this pantheon, not yours."

"Huh."

"So Elo's the god of the Underworld for your pantheon. But the Underworld for the spirits of the peoples out here, near Tawhiti, that's Hine-nui-te-po. Also called Te Po." Maui shakes his head, grips the boat a bit tighter. "I've met her once. Not a pleasant woman."

"So you think she's the one corrupting the _piwakawaka_?"

"Almost certainly." Maui nods back toward the bodies of the birds. "There's nothing that could cause a death like that in the mortal realm, and unless Ao's suddenly decided he hates birds, it's gotta be Te Po."

"So how do we stop her? Get the _piwakawaka_ back?"

"It's impossible." Against the wood of the boat, Maui's hands clench. "Once Te Po's taken something, that's it. It's gone. We just gotta kill it."

"Oh." Moana turns her gaze outward, toward the horizon. There's something white along the horizon, covering a vast expanse of that line. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine."

It's not, and they both know it. But Maui stands anyway, shoots her a grin that would fool any other mortal, and rests his shoulder against the mast. "Okay, Curly, does that answer your questions?"

"Yep!" Moana hops to her feet, eager to dispel that uncomfortable conversation topic. "Well, most of them, anyway. What's that?"

Maui follows her arm out toward the barrier of white on the horizon, and a grin stretches across her face. "Something you've never seen before."

This time she really does whack him with the oar. "More specific, if you please, O Demigod."

Maui chuckles at her, grabs away the oar and prods at her shoulder with it. Moana dives for the oar, smarting at the blow, and wrestles it back from him with a sound whack to the shoulder. Plus Mini-Maui and Mini-Moana pinching him in the shoulder, that probably helped too.

"Fine, fine," he chuckles. "That's a whirlpool."

Moana stares at it in utter disbelief. "No way."

"Yes way," he counters, clapping a hand on her shoulder.

"Maui, that thing's huge! That's bigger than Motunui!"

"Uh-huh."

Moana dashes over toward the prow, standing on her tip-toes to get a better glimpse of it. It's definitely a whirlpool - she can see it frothing around the edges, now - but it's _massive_. Covers half the horizon line. And it's angled kinda funny - instead of sloping downward in the manner typical to whirlpools, this one has a smooth decline. Like the waves were walls instead of churning knells of water.

As they approach the lip of the whirlpool, Moana leans cautiously over the edge. It falls down, down, down, pulling the craft gently toward the center. She stares intently into its depths, trying to make out the bottom, and finds herself staring at nothing but shadow.

More unnerved than she wants to admit, Moana backs away slowly from the edge. Drops like that are vertigo-inducing, and though she stands with two feet planted firmly on the wooden deck of her boat Moana's head is spinning like she's falling. "We're gonna find a giant bird down there?" Moana asks disbelievingly.

Maui hops lightly toward the side of the boat, shoving the halyard at her as he goes. Faintly relieved at the excuse to move away from the churning edge, Moana takes his position at the stern. "Guess it's not home right now," Maui mutters, glaring at the whirlpool like he could make his enemy materialize through grit and determination alone. "Nothing to do but go down."

"Go down?" Moana repeats incredulously.

"Uh, yeah? How else are we gonna fight it?"

"We can't even see where the whirlpool ends!"

"Oh, at the bottom of the seafloor," Maui tosses out, then flips his hand toward the halyard. Moana passes it to him. "We just have to slide down it. Like this."

With a couple confident maneuvers of the stay, Maui sends their canoe wheeling toward the whirlpool at an angle. Instantly, the jarring pull of the whirlpool on their canoe lessens, like it's satisfied for now at their complacency. Moana's torn between gawping over the side at the precipitous drop and sticking securely by Maui's side.

Sliding down the wall of water is much less difficult than Moana anticipated. For the most part it's smooth sailing to rival even that of clear days and blue skies. The canoe tilts inward, gliding down the whirlpool in a spiral.

It would be peaceful if not for the noise. The farther down they travel the louder grows the sound of waves, crashing all around them.

Now more curious than frightened, Moana takes the halyard back from Maui. He hovers over her for a couple of seconds, before deciding she's got this and meandering instead to peer fearlessly over the side of the canoe. It makes sense, Moana reasons, that he would be less frightened. He does have a hook and the ability to turn into a bird at will. Yeah.

The hull of her canoe grates heavily against the bottom of the ocean, juddering to an ungraceful stop several feet from the walls of the whirlpool. Moana snatches her oar back up before the ground can saw it in half, settling it easily in two hands before throwing them out for balance. In front of her, Maui crouches low to the deck, eyes wary.

"Where is it?"

Maui shrugs, lips pressed together tightly. Moana instinctively moves to secure their canoe before realizing that they have nothing to tie it on.

All around them, the walls of water roar and spin, spitting droplets in their faces and stringing Moana's hair heavily over her shoulders. She hops off the boat, feet crunching against the hardened sand. The expanse that lies ahead of her is vast, unending, little ridges and pockmarks in the sand the only features between the curves of the ocean. The seafloor, rid of water, is devoid of life; there is nothing of animals, small crustaceans, even seaweed, lining the depths. Everything is...dead.

A caw sounds, far above them, and Moana looks up to find the sun blotted out by a small shape. As she stares it grows darker and darker, spiralling downward into the whirlpool.

"Aim for the eyes," Maui reminds her, stepping closer to her with his hook aloft. "If it can't see it can't fight and it can't communicate."

"Right." Moana breathes deeply, lifts her oar in a stance to match his. "Okay."

The _piwakawaka_ soars easily downward, seemingly unaffected by the spray inundating its feathers and clouding its vision. As it falls it locks eyes with them, indifferently curious, and lands with a ground-shaking _thump_.

Moana can't hold eye contact with it. Its eyes are fiery and red, like the sun setting low over the horizon and bathing the sky in scarlet, and it burns at her to look. She watches its face instead, gaze dancing around its eyes.

For a long second, none of the three of them move. Beside her, Maui is sizing it up, and it is only because Moana knows him so well that she glimpses a tiny crack in his warrior face, something like sorrow as he eyes the bird with whom he had once travelled turned dark and deadly, before hollering "Chee-huu!" and catapulting himself into the air, wings arching from his shoulders with a flash of his hook.

Moana darts to the left, away from Maui, aiming to scramble up the bird's back. It's huge and hefty, far larger than even Maui himself. It should be a quick matter to scrabble up its feathers and whack at its eyes until it cannot see again. With that plan burned into her mind, Moana sprints around its back as the _piwakawaka_ swerves to keep Maui in its sights. Its huge tail sweeps the bottom of the seafloor, spraying sand toward her eyes and forcing her to screw them more tightly shut as she careens toward it.

There are ten feathered tails sweeping toward her like invitations, so she picks one at random and leaps along it, hoisting herself up and onto its back in quick motions, oar tucked in one wrist. So long as the _piwakawaka_ stays grounded, she should be able to reach its face.

Around her Maui swoops, looseing his ferocious war-cry as he keeps the _piwakawaka_ distracted. As a hawk he is agile, lithe in the skies, and ducks between its enraged talons and piercing beak with relative ease. Moana even thinks she can spy some of the familiar war-thrill clamoring its way back into his expression.

Maui soars over their heads, high above the bottom of the ocean. Moana knows this maneuver, a tight downward spiral likely aimed for the _piwakawaka's_ neck. He flaps around the edge of the walls of water, flaps growing shorter and quicker as he gains speed. And in an instant, the whole battle shifts.

Moana feels like she's being shoved to the ground. With a helpless shout of alarm, she feels herself being jerked from the back of the _piwakawaka_ and slams against the sand, her oar skittering out of her grasp.

Worse, three seconds later, Maui hits the ground.

He smacks against the sand with a short cry of pain and a breathless pant. Moana sits up, movements slow and heavy, like there are weights attached to her chest that pin her down. Then she drags herself toward Maui, trying to work out how to get her legs to obey her mind's panicked commands. "Maui?" she calls.

The _piwakawaka_ chuffs a laugh, eyeing Moana with something uncannily like amusement. It lifts one great taloned hand, and with claws extended, digs into Maui's unprotected back. Still wincing, Maui squirms under the _piwakawaka's_ talons, face contorted in a grimace. His hands clench desperately around the unforgiving sandy rock, and the bird drives him further into the ground.

"Hey!" Moana yells before fully processing the idea, jerking herself to her feet. Though she cannot move herself, her words travel easily beneath the roaring of the waves. "Big feather-brained dull-taloned peacock!"

The _piwakawaka_ turns a slow head toward her. With one last jab of its talons into Maui's back, it draws upright and folds its wings satisfiedly around itself. But Moana has no eyes for the bird save that it is no longer tormenting Maui.

With labored movements the demigod pulls his face from the sand, looks at her. Pain fills his face, before he lifts one trembling hand to try to push himself to his feet.

He can't. He flops back onto the sand, limp and helpless.

Above them towers the _piwakawaka_. It chuffs a bird-laugh, like Maui's hawk-laugh but distorted, deeper and more ominous, sending chills down Moana's spine. Desperation lends her strength and she drags herself fully to her feet, stumbling next to Maui.

"Maui?" she asks again, voice getting louder and louder over the roar of the ocean. He is breathing but barely, labored, like every breath causes him agony. " _Maui?_ "

There is no reply. Moana sets a hand on his shoulder, on his back. There are four pricks in his back, small but deep, bleeding beneath her fingers. Her touches elicit no response - he stays still and lifeless beneath her palms. Panic wells up in her and she shakes him a little bit, calling his name again, searching desperately for any recognition in his face.

The _piwakawaka_ drives its beak downward, straight toward Maui. Moana looks up soon enough to catch its face slamming downward toward Maui's back, and without thinking Moana grabs her oar and smashes it upward.

She drives it straight into face of the _piwakawaka_ with a force that surprises even her. The hook splinters under the blow. The bird recoils, tiny chips of wood digging into its feathers, and Moana is left with nothing more than a shattered staff and chips of wood dug into her arms.

"Wake up!" she yells again, the word scratching painfully with desperation along her throat. "Maui, can you hear me?"

He says nothing. For a brief moment Moana fears that this will be the last she sees of him, dragging himself painfully up to look at her to apologize, but she shoves that thought down.

"Hey!" she screams, moving quickly from Maui's fallen form, grabbing its attention and pulling it away from him. She's not even sure if the _piwakawaka_ can understand her words but the anger in her tone catches its attention easily enough. "Ugly urchin-looking gross-feathered seagull!"

Determination fills her and though her legs are set to collapse, she leaps to one side, driving herself toward the _piwakawaka_.

Then, between one bound and the next, she is weightless.

She yelps in alarm as she suddenly bounds high into the sky, higher than she has ever leaped before, straight toward the chest of the _piwakawaka_. She rams into it painfully, smacking her shoulder against its chest, before drifting lightly to the ground.

Moana stops, kneeling on the ground, and stares at her own two feet. Then she looks toward the _piwakawaka_ , who looks smugly back at her, then to the place where Maui had slammed into the ground from high above her head.

The Underground is a place of mystery and terror for mortals. The weightless spirits that find themselves there after death float around, unbound by the laws of the normal world. For these spirits and its goddess, gravity is nothing more than an idle concept. But for humans, normal and demigod alike, gravity is an all-important concept of their world.

And if Hine-nui-te-po could manipulate gravity within her own realm, who is to say that this _piwakawaka_ , corruption fashioned with her own two hands, could not do the same?

Moana's oar is gone. She has no weapon, none that she has used before. There is nothing she can salvage from her canoe. Right now, she has nothing but her bare hands and her mind.

So, taking advantage of her weightlessness, Moana bounds quickly toward Maui. Behind her, the air rumbles as she _piwakawaka_ lifts into the sky, still making that abominable laughing noise that sounds like stones slamming together, grating against one another. The sun dims once more as it hovers above her, great wings buffeting her like the tides of the ocean itself.

Moana leaps over Maui, rolls to his side, and snatches up his hook.

Ordinarily she can hardly lift it. It is made of something heavier than stone, something nigh-unbreakable, made for the hands of a demigod. But with this _piwakawaka_ changing her weight and the weight of all things, Moana hefts it in two hands with a loud grunt before shifting course as far from Maui as she can get.

Over her head, the _piwakawaka_ turns to face her, the tiny mortal sprinting across its home, and dives.

With her legs burning and mind racing Moana glances upward, sees it beginning to descend and throws the hook from her. The next second her weight changes, sending her slamming into the ground, and the hook thunks heavily against the sand. Moana has only a flash in the corner of her vision and her slamming heart to twist sluggishly out of the path of the _piwakawaka_. She rolls to one side, covering her head with her hands, and its beak slams into the spot where her head had been not moments before.

Its shoulder glances off her side, driving her breath from her. Moana staggers away from it on her hands and knees, hands against her chest as she struggles to regain breath, still dragging herself toward Maui's hook.

As she goes, she lightens until she can walk again. Then it is normal, as though she were on the shores of Motunui, so Moana positions herself over the hook and waits.

Sure enough, the _piwakawaka_ cannot extricate from its burrow into the ground. As it drags its face from the ground gravity loosens its grip on her, bit by bit, and the face of the _piwakawaka_ emerges speck by speck from the ground. Its tens of feathers flare sharply behind it as it struggles to extricate itself from the ground.

Instantly, Moana grabs at the handle of Maui's hook and tugs. Still she cannot lift it. She rests her hands upon its handle, body tensed and ready. Out come its eyes, which blink open and glare red toward the ground; then its nose, its nostrils, and the last of its beak has emerged when Moana whips the hook from the ground with ease and slams it blindly toward the face of the _piwakawaka_.

It recoils with a high scream of pain, a shout that makes the walls of the ocean shiver around them. Moana curses to herself as she realizes that she missed. She hit its nose, not its eyes, and as it bleeds that same red Moana coils her legs beneath her. The _piwakawaka_ rears upward, still cawing in pain. Moana spares a glance toward Maui and anger flares within her and she gathers everything that she feels, her fear and pain and joy and rage and _leaps_.

Moana travels higher, higher, higher, and when she is level with the face of the _piwakawaka_ she strikes.

This time, Maui's hook aims true. Her swing drags the point through both of its eyes, replacing the red of its eyes with another, deeper scarlet.

Gravity reasserts itself normally, and Moana is dragged to the ground both by her own weight and that of the hook. They slam into the sand, both her and the hook, and Moana lets out an involuntary cry of pain as she absorbs the entire impact with her shoulder.

But she does not stay down. The _piwakawaka_ staggers furiously around its home, claws carelessly gouging the earth, so Moana throws her entire weight behind the hook and drags it back toward the canoe, back toward Maui.

His chest still rises and falls with breath. "Maui?" she tries, loudly, settling herself and the hook between him and the wounded throes of the _piwakawaka_. "Are you awake? Maui!"

One of the taloned feet of the _piwakawaka_ flash in her vision as it staggers toward them. Heart in her throat Moana watches it descends over her head, toward Maui's unprotected back, but Maui does not move.

She has less than a moment to steel herself before wrapping both hands firmly around the handle and driving it toward the tipped foot with a ferocious yell of fury.

Her grip is awkward, clumsy, and sets her wrist aching. The point dips out of its intended path and does not cut off its foot like she had hoped, but it does knock the _piwakawaka_ to one side. With a final cry of pain, the _piwakawaka_ slams into the ground, twitching lightly.

Moana gathers the rest of her strength and turns Maui onto his back, then runs a hand over his forehead. He still breathes, but there is a smattering of bruises already deepening along his ribs and his breaths are ragged like something is broken.

Gritting her teeth against the worry tugging at her chest, Moana tries to lift Maui off the ground, wrapping her arms around his chest. He's too large - she has no purchase. When she tries again he groans, quietly, and his entire face contorts in a wince. She drops him instantly, heart pounding again.

Moana looks up toward the sun, toward the walls of water curving in toward her, piercing against the ground like spears. Then she shakes off her worry and her superstition, sets her shoulders.

By some miracle, their canoe is still intact. Moana grabs the ropes hanging uselessly on the sand and throws her entire weight against it. She grunts, turning herself beneath the twine as she struggles to drag it toward Maui, but it is no good.

Then the ocean seeps around her, wrapping around her ankles. Moana blinks at it, for a moment certain that she's hallucinating, but a glance toward the whirlpool tells her that she's not - sure enough, piece-by-piece, the whirlpool is collapsing in on itself.

The water swells around her ankles and her thighs, brushing against her legs. The canoe is suddenly much easier to pull and Moana laughs, half-tension and half-panic, as it follows her touch easily.

She slides it over to Maui on the surface of the water and instantly wants to hit herself in the head. Where the water is hardly over her knees it is already nearly covering his face.

Instantly Moana is at his side. "This might hurt a bit," she tells him quietly, then braces herself against the seafloor and wraps her arms under his shoulders.

He winces instantly, face contorting once more, but Moana steels herself against the sight and limps the short distance toward the canoe. The water is up to her thighs, now, brushing almost at the top of her skirt. She rests for a brief moment, Maui's head lolling lifelessly on her shoulder, then launches herself backward and onto the surface of the boat.

She makes it, and they both skid backward, the boat teetering alarmingly at the sudden shift in weight. Moana lays on the deck for several seconds, panting, before lifting herself into a kneel and watching the whirlpool pour in with awe.

The body of the _piwakawaka_ does not rise with the water.

Assured that the water will continue to lift them upward, the ocean swelling around her canoe and lifting her from the bottom of the sea, Moana kneels beside Maui.

He still struggles for breath, but he is not so pale and shaky as he was when he was lying defenseless on the bottom of the ocean. Moana runs two gentle hands over his chest, probing lightly around his ribs, and winces. There is definitely a crack where there should be nothing but smooth bone, and Moana removes her hands from that area quickly.

Physically, there is little she can do for him save get him to Motunui. Broken bones take time to heal, as do the bruises still blossoming across his chest. But he breathes more easily and regains color as she speaks.

"Can you hear me?" she asks him quietly, straining against his shoulder to duck beneath it, assess the damage done to his back. Those four gashes are still stark and present, but they're no longer bleeding. Being a demigod, Moana guesses, must come with perks.

"Moana?"

Moana sits bolt upright. "Maui?"

He exhales a confused affirmation, glances around them. Moana can only imagine what it must look like to him, the walls of water sliding downward in great crashing sheets, and he tries to sit up.

"Wait, don't - you idiot," she shrieks, pressing two hands against his shoulders as he winces and lowers himself painfully back down to the deck. "It's okay. We're fine, the _piwakawaka_ is dead, and the ocean's helping us out. Just lie still. How do you feel?"

"What?" he rasps, which in terms of helpfulness is about the worst answer he could have given.

"It's a long story," she decides eventually. Moana shakes her head at him, noting how he tracks her every movement, face torn between confusion and the last vestiges of pain. "I'll tell it after your nap."

"I don't need a nap." His voice, though hoarse, sounds offended.

"Yes you do. Go to sleep."

"Don't want to," he mumbles, but the yawn and the fact that his eyes are already closing again negate any impressiveness that statement could have held.

"Uh-huh," she replies skeptically. Despite his apparent best intentions, Maui begins snoring within minutes.

Moana consciously lets the tension drain from her body, relaxing against the deck. Over their heads the sun begins to set, the first of the stars appearing in the sky. Moana sits up, yawns, tugs on the halyard, and promptly realizes that she has no oar.

For a second, Moana panics, in a flash of memory recalling Maui's hand flapping uselessly over the surface of the water as he tried in vain to flee from the Kakamora. She swears, loud and hysterical, at the surface of the water.

Then, like it's laughing at her, the ocean spits up the smashed remains of her hook.

The handle is just long enough to still be useful as an oar. Moana lets the canoe idle while she gathers the rest carefully, scooping every shard into a basket and tucking it into the hull. When they return to Motunui she will ask their woodcarver to have it restored.

But for now, Moana settles back in her canoe with one eye on the horizon and the other on Maui's rising chest, still filling with breath.


	10. Chapter 10

Prompt: moana goes missing for a while and maui goes crazy trying to find her

* * *

Newea awakes to the sound of footsteps in the _fale tele_. At first, she assumes the footfalls belong to her cousins, probably prowling off for some midnight excursion on the shore. But she listens, closely, and abruptly realizes that these footsteps are far too heavy to belong to any of her young relatives.

Nervous energy shooting through her, Newea shimmies quietly out from underneath Fetuilelagi, eyes peeled and wary for the outline of an intruder -

"Maui?" she whispers, arching an incredulous eyebrow in the direction of the ominous footsteps. Don't demigods have better things to be doing at such a late hour than plodding through a _fale tele_?

"Newea?" he responds, and his huge feet pound on over to her. His silhouette is massive in the darkness, but Newea kinda wants to laugh at herself for being scared. Maui's like the least threatening uncle she has.

"What are you doing here?"

"Looking for someone," he replies, glancing over his shoulder as he speaks, careful even while distracted to keep the point of his hook away from the prone forms of her sleeping cousins. "Hey, kid. You wouldn't happen to know where Moana is, would you?"

"Moana?" Newea blinks at him, frowning. "No, she's not here. What's wrong?"

"Um. Nothing."

"Uh-huh. Maui, I might be fourteen," she replies, crossing her arms, "but I'm not a stupid little kid."

"I know you're not."

"And I know something's wrong. Spill, demigod."

Maui refocuses on her, smiling a bit despite the worry clear on his face. "You know," he smirks, "one day you're gonna meet a demigod that doesn't take so kindly to being bossed around."

"And that day's not today." She crosses her arms impertinently. "Have you tried checking her _fale_?"

"Yeah."

"The ocean?"

"Yep."

"Even the little bit of rock with the gray on it?"

"Even that one. And down by the boats, the outcrop that juts from the shore. Everywhere."

Newea frowns at his conundrum. She opens her mouth to suggest the Chief's _fale_ , because maybe Moana and her parents are discussing some important adult business so late at night, but at that moment Fetuilelagi wraps her little arms around Newea's legs.

"Newea?" she asks sleepily, "What's going on - oh hi Uncle Maui!"

"Hi, kiddo," he replies, glancing again around the _fale tele_. "Lagi, you seen Moana anywhere?"

"Yeah!"

Maui blinks. "Where?"

"In the coconut grove this morning! She promised she'd teach me how to dance the _siva tau_ and we spent a couple of hours together!"

"Oh - no, Lagi, I mean in the past few hours. Recently."

"Oh." Lagi pouts. "No."

"Is Aunt Moana missing?" comes a third voice. Despite herself, Newea's a bit relieved as La'ei joins her and Lagi, because even though La'ei's half her age she acts so mature.

Maui sighs a little bit, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I'm sure she's fine, La'ei."

"But she _is_ missing."

A frustrated exhale, like the one he gives when Moana refuses to stop teasing him. Or when Moana gets the third point in as many days. Newea loves seeing Moana accumulate points on Mini-Maui's scoreboard, because Maui always gets into hilarious fights with his tiny tattoo about favoritism and liking mortals over the demigod whose skin he lives on. "A little bit."

Newea can kinda hear La'ei roll her eyes, put her hands on her hips. Aunt Moana always says she's going to be a Chief just like her one day. That makes La'ei smile really happily, a feat that even Newea has trouble accomplishing. "You can't be a _little bit_ missing, Uncle Maui."

"Moana's always been one for managing the impossible," Maui grumbles, then shakes his head. "Okay, so she's definitely not here. I'll go check the coconut grove again." He shrugs his huge shoulders, still looking over his shoulder with concern but doing his best to muster a grin for them. "Thanks, little guys. 'Night."

Oh, like _that's_ gonna convince them. Even though they're little, they're not stupid!

Besides. Maui never worries about _anything_ , not even when Moana yells at him, and that's scary. Since he's worried now, it has to be even worse than when Moana gets angry, and Newea doesn't want anything worse than Moana when she gets angry. Not on her island!

* * *

Tui wakes to his granddaughter's hands shaking his shoulder. He comes to consciousness abruptly, and as he blinks sleep from his eyes with practiced speed La'ei's face swims worriedly in front of his own.

"What is it, dear one?" he asks, laying a hand on her shoulder. "A nightmare?"

"No. It's Moana."

Tui frowns. "Is she all right?"

The little one shrugs, scuffs her feet against the earth. "We don't know. We can't find her."

Across the _fale_ , Sina receives the same waking treatment from Fetuilelagi, if remarkably more enthusiastic. Tui is not entirely sure who taught their young Lagi that bouncing on an elder's chest is an acceptable way to wake them, but Tui is devoutly grateful that it is Sina Lagi chose to wake instead of him.

"Have you found Maui?" he reasons, because where one is the other tends to follow.

La'ei shakes her head, and for the first time Tui begins to feel nervous. "He woke us up. He didn't mean to, but he was looking through the _fale tele_ for her and he asked us where she was. He's headed down to the beach to look for her but right now she's not with him."

Strange. It is uncharacteristic of Maui to search out Moana so late at night. Unless of course she were suffering a nightmare, but in these cases Moana tends to be found in her _fale_. That Maui is awake and searching for his daughter and unable to find her, is alarming.

Tui shifts himself into a kneel in front of La'ei. "Thank you for letting us know," he says gravely, and ruffles a hand through her hair. Though she tries to keep a stoic exterior, taking after her mother, she can't seem to help a small giggle. "You said that Maui was bound for the shoreline, correct?"

La'ei nods eagerly, vestiges of pride still clear on her face. Tui looks toward Sina, finds her gazing at him with the same worried expression. "Thank you, little ones," she says, kneeling as well. "You should return to sleep now, and when you wake Moana will be back."

"But -"

"Okay, Gramma," La'ei cuts Lagi off with a sharp look. "C'mon, Lagi, let's head back."

"La'ei!" the younger one whines, but La'ei's grip is firm as bone as she hauls Fetuilelagi out of their _fale_.

Tui watches the duo leave ruefully. "They are not going back to sleep."

Sina shakes her head, an amused grin curling up at the edges of her face. "Of course not. Their Chief is missing."

Tui huffs a small laugh, steps from the _fale_ with his wife's hand in his own. Behind their backs, Lagi and La'ei scramble away, whispering in hushed tones. The very absence of Fetuilelagi's indignant squealing through the night air pretty much confirms Tui's guess - doubtless those two children are headed for the shoreline. He sighs, pinches his nose.

Hardly have they progressed two feet before a hawk's cry sounds over their heads. They glance up, and Tui sees Maui's silhouette against the moon. It is an outline he has seen many nights before, during evenings of his own sleeplessness, and in his warmer moments he fancies that the demigod protects his island from harm.

On this evening, even from so far away, he sees how the demigod's wings strain against the evening air.

* * *

When she finds out, Arona heads straight toward the beach. Her wife, along with the rest of the people on the eastern side of the island, had dispersed into the forests, carrying with them flickering torches and anxious expressions. But Arona strides toward her fishing boats, keeping one wary eye on the ocean. Isn't like Moana to be in the trees during a night like this, Arona thinks, but for once keeps her mouth shut. They've gotta do something to make themselves feel better, anyway. She can't blame 'em for that.

Arona snags a torch on her way down to the shore, casting it over their fishing fleet. She counts the crafts carefully, then again, then triple-checks her counting. It's the same number as yesterday, and the day before, and the day before. No boats missing. No way Moana could've sailed off into the ocean.

She'd hoped that the solution to the problem of their missing Chief would be simple, that she could call for Maui to swoop himself over the seas until he could return their beloved Moana to them. Well, no chance of that now.

Arona's peering into the hulls, stocked with emergency rations, on the wild chance that Moana has decided to tuck herself there, when a flash of something silvery catches her eye. She calmly casts her torch out toward the ocean, straightening from the deck.

A flash of blue, and the blob grows smaller, more rapid. It sets course straight for her. Arona places the figure, shuts the trapdoor to the hull and steps backward to make more room on the deck.

Maui materializes in front of her seconds later, hardly pausing to tuck his hook beneath his shoulder before shaking his hair out of his face and fixing his gaze on her. "Arona, have you - are there -"

"Our boats're accounted for," she announces regretfully. "'ve counted 'em all three times over. There's no way she's out there, Maui."

Something in Maui's gaze shrinks, like for some reason he'd been hoping for other news. Eh, that makes sense, in a way - least with a missing boat they'd know she's on the water. He swears then, sudden and violent, and it's only Arona's own foul mouth that limits her reaction to a bare lifted eyebrow. Normally Maui's good 'bout keeping his sailor mouth to himself, especially on Motunui. Something about not corrupting the kiddos. Which Arona thinks is awful ironic because if anything's gonna corrupt their kiddos, it's not gonna be his tongue - it's gonna be his heady stories, full of adventures and heroism and gods.

"She's not out on the ocean," she adds for good measure, because she's gotta say something or else that terrified expression is just gonna swallow the demigod whole.

"I don't - what if she is?"

"Maui, she doesn't have a boat. There's no way you can't sail without somethin' to keep you afloat."

"No, but -" he gesticulates vaguely, and when Arona peers closer at him there's a bit of panic in his eyes. A lot, actually. It's really something. "I can't find her in her _fale_ or in her parents', she's not on the Chief's Peak or the path up to it and she's not on the shore, there are people scouring the forest and they've got nothing. Where else could she be, Arona? What if she's - what if she went swimming, or something, or dancing too close to the shore…."

"What, and the ocean just up 'n took her?" Arona frowns, kinda concerned. Maui's clearly got the shorter end of the sanity stick right now. "It wouldn't do that. 's a friend of hers, remember?"

"But where else could she be?" he replies desperately. "There's nothing - where?"

Arona shrugs. "Dunno. Ask her parents. Maybe she's got some childhood haunts we don't know about."

Maui nods, sharply, still kinda twisted up and distraught. Arona feels bad for him. Must be horrible to feel that much, especially for someone like their reckless Chief. Adored though Moana is, Arona's not oblivious that their Voyager Chief's got a penchant for mischief and trouble wider than the horizon itself. Sails right off the edge of the world. Horrible though it is for her parents, bless their hearts, it's gotta be even worse for her guardian demigod.

"Okay," he says, clinging to the thought like a lifeline. He turns away from her, toward Motunui, and his hair sways a bit to show the little demigod-boy drowning. He looks sorta like that now, all clogged panic and loud voice. Makes her feel bad for him.

He takes off without another word. Arona shrugs at him, silently wishes him the best, and goes back to checking the hulls.

* * *

Sina plants a torch in the shade of a coconut tree when she hears footsteps pounding on the ground behind her. She half-turns, expecting Tui, and finds Maui instead.

Her heart leaps, but then she registers his expression and the noticeable absence of Moana at his side. It throws her off-guard for a second, that Maui would be wandering around Motunui without Moana leading the way, until she quickly remembers the reason she's in a coconut grove with the stars so full above her head.

"Sina," he pants, and he's been running for some time if he's visibly exhausted - Sina's never seen him look quite this tired, and it probably has something to do with the visible worry creasing his face - "I gotta - are there any, y'know," he huffs, pausing briefly to regain his breath, "childhood hiding places, any…anything that Moana could be doing, somewhere she could be?"

Moana's hiding place was the entire island, Sina thinks ruefully. As a young girl Moana scoured every inch of her island from top to bottom, eager to find mysteries and secrets in the depths of the forest. She would come back with dirt-coated hands and seashells tucked in her hair. But that's not helpful, so she shakes her head regretfully.

Maui's hook slams into the ground next to him with shocking force, so hard that the flame kindled on her torch wavers with the brunt of it. In the distance, the other three groups dispersed through the forest, their torches flicker too. "Nowhere?" he presses desperately, staring at her like he could pull the answer from her mind himself. "Any - any secret places on the island, maybe something known to Chiefs alone, I don't know, any -"

"Oh!" she interrupts, excitement coursing through her. Of _course_ , how had she not realized earlier! There's only one place on the island Maui would not know about and it would form as the perfect hiding spot, so well-hidden that even young _Moana_ , hands covered in the very soul of her island, could not find it without guidance. "Of course, the Cavern of the Ancestors!"

Those words mean nothing to Maui. He stares at her, hope and confusion warring on his face, and she hastens to explain. "The Cavern, where our ancestors hid all our boats," she explains, words spilling from her in excitement. "Even Moana couldn't find it when she was younger it's no _wonder_ we couldn't find her -"

"Where is it?" he cuts her off.

"Over there," she points over his shoulder, in the direction of the waterfall just scarcely visible from the center of the grove, "through that waterfall there's a large opening -"

But he's already gone. In a flash of his hook Maui vanishes, a huge hawk taking his place, and without any sort of caw or cry he strains toward the waterfall, feathers torn and trailing in his wake.

* * *

Moana crosses her ankles idly, trails a hand through the water. Even without their fleet anchored behind the waterfall, it's peaceful in here. No noise, no clamor - just her and the gentle washing of the waves along the shore. As she hums to herself, the sound echoes quietly against the walls, repeating her own melody with a hundred engraved voices. Like her ancestors are singing back.

It is a tune that she first heard in this very Cavern. It's comforting, in a way, that even though her ancestors are passed into a realm that she will not know for many years, she can carry their voices. She can give back to her people the long-forgotten harmonies of the ancient voyagers.

Moana had thought it would be depressing, seeking solace in the Cavern. But it's calming, in a way. The stone is cool and refreshing against her back, and the constant trickle of water from the walls sounds like a melody of its own, _plip_ -ing against the lake swelling beneath her feet. In here, with the quiet of the ocean and the humming open space, so full of hope and history, Moana can find peace.

Moana lets her voice trail off with the end of the song, and smiles despite herself. The final note vibrates against her ears like a caress, like the back of a wrinkled hand gentle against her cheek, and Moana draws in a satisfied breath. She lays a hand flat against the surface of the lake, giggling a bit when it ripples outward. Like it's saying hello.

Then the silence of the Cavern shatters. There's a huge pounding of footsteps from outside, and Moana hardly has time to look up from the lake before she's swept off her feet into a crushing hug.

"Moana!" Maui's voice exclaims from over her head.

"Maui?" she replies, pulling in a huge lungful of air before returning his hug, albeit confusedly. He's holding her with trembling limbs, and she pulls away a little to see creases of concern all over his face. "Did something happen, is everyone okay?"

Maui sets her down. "No, nothing happened. We just - everyone was looking for you and we couldn't find you."

"It's the middle of the night," she points out, still kinda confused about why Maui looks quite so distressed, "why did you need me? Did something go wrong?"

"No, nothing went wrong," Maui says, "we were just worried about you."

Worried about her? "I'm fine," she replies preemptively. "You didn't have to freak out, I just had a nightmare, figured I'd come in here. How did you find me?"

"I asked your mom." Maui shakes his head at her, takes a little step forward. "Just - let me know next time, okay -"

"Wait, you asked my _mom_?"

"Yeah!" he replies defensively. "I mean I couldn't find you and I knew something was wrong, so I had to ask someone."

In a flash, Moana recalls a secondary, more annoying function of this tiny incarnation of herself on Maui's chest. Other than, of course, backing her up when her witticisms are particularly scathing. "Oh," she says quietly. Of course. She'd had her nightmare and Mini-Moana had probably let Maui know, _again_ , meddling little tattoo, and then Maui couldn't find her and panicked and told her parents –

"Oh no, you told my _parents_?"

"Uh…" Maui trails off uncomfortably, dragging his hook into little patterns in the sand. "No?"

"You just mentioned my mom."

"I mean. _I_ didn't tell her."

"What do you mean, _you_ didn't?"

"It wasn't me that told her."

"Then who was it?"

"…Fetuilelagi."

Moana gapes at him. "You told _Fetuilelagi_ I was missing?"

"It's not my fault! I was poking around the _fale tele_ because you take naps in there sometimes - way too often for your own good, might I add," he jabs at her, and she winces a bit because he's right, she's got sore backs enough for a lifetime to remind her, "and I accidentally woke up Newea. Who then woke up Lagi and La'ei."

Moana sighs, pinches the bridge of her nose despite a small smile burgeoning across her face at the sheer ridiculousness of this scenario. "So, you five took a nice midnight tour of Motunui," she summarize, batting down the urge to laugh.

"Well…no. It, uh, might have been more than five."

"More than - who else did you wake up?"

Surely he didn't wake up the whole village. No, she hadn't been gone for long enough. There's no way he'd alerted everyone -

"Uh, the entire village."

Moana stares.

At her expression, he adds "Hey! I didn't know what had happened, all I knew was that you were in trouble and I couldn't find you! I didn't know if you were still on the island or if you'd got lost out on the sea, and then Arona told me there weren't any boats missing, and the hunters couldn't find you anywhere in the forest and that's when your father got _umu_ tenders involved to double-check and comb the mountain so I didn't know if you'd got lost at sea or _what_!"

"The whole village," she repeats, and bites down on the hysterical urge to laugh.

"Yeah." He pauses. "Except Mareana, I think, but she only gets out of bed for storms and making fun of people, so…practically everyone, yeah."

"We're gonna be exhausted tomorrow."

Maui shrugs, slings a companionable arm around her shoulder. It's a mark of just how many times he's done the exact same move that Moana doesn't fall over under the sudden weight. His face is all scuffed with dirt. "Eh," he says, and winks at her. "It was worth it."

* * *

Shoutout to welp-this-is-awkward for a very kind review at a very good time. Thank you, welp, your review made my evening. :)


	11. Chapter 11

Prompt: Moana tells her tale, but since Maui doesn't show himself she starts being ostracized by the village, fueled by an angry unwanted suitor. When Maui does come to visit, it's in time to see the suitor hitting Moana. Not in front of the other villagers though. Maybe he caught her walking.

* * *

Look, I...Motunui loves Moana. A lot. She's their Chief and their leader, and even if they didn't believe her about meeting Maui they'd at least know she restored the Heart since, y'know, their island's not dead. So there's a faction of the village that doesn't believe her, but they don't show up too much in this story.

* * *

Maui hums a tune idly to himself as he strides through Motunui's forests, pausing occasionally to spring off the nearest tree. It's been a little while since he's been in quite so much forest with quite so many trees - the last couple islands he taught to sail were a bit smaller than Motunui, mostly beach and a couple coconut groves - and Maui'd forgotten just how fun it was to do flips off the side of the trees. Even though there's no one to show off to but the birds and the sky, it's a habit, okay?

Curly's made herself hard to find, though, Maui thinks, fond exasperation making him roll his eyes up at the sky. "Six months," he sighs good-naturedly to the nearest trunk. "Six months and you'd think she'd be a bit more happy to see me. But _no_ , she's gone and hidden herself in a _giant forest_!"

Surely most mortals aren't this elusive. Surely.

He swings his hook in tune with his whistling melody as he walks, each step jolting the notes in his chest. Really, would it kill Moana to stay in one place? It was her parents that had greeted him when he dropped out of the sky, looking for Moana. He wouldn't have recognized them - he doesn't pretend to be good at mortal-categorizing - if not for the Chief's headdress on her father's head. That, combined with Moana's repeated insistences that she is the _daughter of the Chief_ , thank you, made identifying her parents relatively easy.

 _Otherwise occupied_. That's what they'd told him. Where's Moana? Oh, _otherwise occupied._ Maui's pretty curious as to what, exactly, is more preoccupying than Moana's best friend - who happens to be a _demigod_ , by the way - dropping by to say hello. He's a busy man, okay? He doesn't exactly drop by on social calls for other mortals. For any other mortals, actually.

In the distance, the familiar notes of Moana's voice catch his attention. Maui strides forward more quickly, stilling the swings of his hook, fully intent on telling her off for keeping him waiting, how rude, when he realizes abruptly that she sounds angry.

Like, really angry. Like, angrier-than-she-was-with-Tamatoa angry. The first bits of concern spark in Maui's chest as he runs - jogs, thank you, he's still jogging, demigods don't _run_ unless they're being chased - toward the sound.

He finds Moana in a clearing of sorts, and is stopped from scooping her up into a hug and then telling her off for not being available when he drops out of the sky unannounced and then being thoroughly chastised for his arrogance by the presence of another man in the clearing.

The man is, what, five or six years older than Moana, broad shoulders and mouth turned down in a sneer. There's also a sack in his hand, opened with the contents spilled on the ground around Moana, and it only takes a couple of seconds for Maui to realize that Moana's still young by human standards. Come to think of it, isn't Moana...suiting-age? The age for suitors? Suitable-age?

Now _that's_ a weird thought. Maui's not even sure how Moana would fit a husband into her life. He'd have to be really good at sailing, and kind and patient, and respectful. But hey, who's Maui to judge? Maybe Moana's found her number one.

Maui figures he should introduce himself, maybe clap the guy on the back, scare the wits out of him just for a good laugh. Brightening at the prospect of terrorizing a mortal, he hides a small guffaw behind one hand, then focuses on Moana's expression.

And no, this is definitely not her number one, Maui decides quickly, because she looks furious. She's practically spitting fire, and he knows her well enough to see the little corners of her warrior's face curling her mouth down, like she's trying to intimidate him and trying to stop herself from attacking in equal measure. Her hands are balled in little fists at her side.

The guy's faring no better, except he doesn't have the restraint of Motunui's Master Wayfinder. His face is contorted openly in a snarl, plus he's a pretty large guy - lots of tattoos and muscles and a whole mass of hair tied back. And look, Maui doesn't profess to know that much about interacting with mortals. He doesn't. But even _he_ can read the threat clear in this guy's stance.

Needless to say, Maui really, really doesn't like it.

His plan of action changes from stepping out and clapping the guy's back to maybe just knocking him flat on his stomach, and Maui's got his hook ready in his hand when the other guy grabs Moana's necklace.

Her suitor jerks her forward, and Moana stumbles like a caught fish before angrily snatching her pendant away and standing her ground again. She yells something, almost loud enough for Maui to hear, something angry and decisive.

Then the guy hits her.

Right in the face, clean across the jawbone. Even from here Maui can tell it's a blow that would've sent most mortals sprawling on their back, but Moana's taken worse hits and survived, this puny mortal man has nothing on Tamatoa or Te Ka, so she just stumbles backward and holds her cheekbone a little bit with blood dripping from her nose.

Maui didn't come to Motunui to pick a fight, he really didn't. There was the giant squid of Lalotai he killed off another island a couple weeks ago, he's not running at full steam or anything. He can't blame fight-readiness for the way his vision clouds over with rage. It's...kinda frightening, actually. Battle-rage is a good thing most of the time, but anger quite _this_ bad, the kind that makes him see sideways and forget that his ears are a part of his body and filter out all inputs except the fool who just _hit Moana_ , that's not productive. That's just conducive to, well, murder.

Less than a second later, Moana surges forward and within a heartbeat this guy's sprawled across the ground.

Seeing retribution of some sort, though it doesn't stop his fists from shaking, broadens his tunnel vision a bit to include Moana. And that's pride, he thinks, stirring in his chest. Her warrior face is full-fledged now, a snarl and a laugh all at once, and even though there are little bruises ringing her eye she stands straight and tall and proud over the man who had grabbed her pendant and jerked her around.

"Get off of my island," she commands, and huh. Somewhere within the past half-minute Maui had bounded close enough to them to hear what Moana is saying. Her face is contorted in a rage and a sort of vicious satisfaction that Maui recognizes as maybe his own, standing with one foot on his chest. "You're no longer welcome here, Taika."

"You will never," the guy spits, tattoos heaving with fury, "never receive a better offer than me! I'm not going anywhere!"

Moana stomps hard on his chest, and Maui can't help a small sympathetic wince at the small cracking sound that echoes across the clearing. Then he remember who's on the other end of Moana's cold fury and abruptly feels no pity at all. Now might be a good time to step forward, just to really terrify the guy. Because who wouldn't be horrified to know they've wronged a mortal under _Maui's_ protection? Maui, Hero to All - not a guy you want to piss off.

He almost does, just for the vindictive satisfaction of seeing this guy cower more than he already is. But he looks again toward Moana - impatient, independent Moana - and decides, eh, his presence probably isn't necessary. Much fun as it would be, looks like Curly's got this one well, heh, in hand.

"Understand this, Taika," she hisses, and oh apparently Maui's still getting closer because he can hear this too, his feet are moving toward Moana without conscious thought, that's weird, "I do not need you. Motunui does not need your tribe. You were received on this island through the grace of myself and my father. Do not fool yourself and overestimate your own merit." Another purposeful smash against his chest. He flails for a second, trying to throw her off, but Moana pins his arms with her feet, towering over him.

"It may be different where you are from," she commands, voice clear, "but on my island the price of assaulting a Chief is death. Should you wish to retain your life, Taika, I strongly advise that you leave."

She waits a couple of seconds, a purposeful dramatic flair that Maui vaguely recognizes as his, before steps off him. She curls backward with the grace of a hawk. The guy pulls himself to his feet, painfully, kinda hunched over himself like every movement hurts. Already, his side is swelling like crazy, and there are little rings of bruise like footprints on his forearms. He glares murderously at her for a moment, spits something that makes her eyebrows clench in fury, then hobbles away.

Moana follows suit, turning toward the sea. She looks calm and quiet and Taika evidently takes this as an invitation to try again because he sneaks around behind her in what he obviously thinks is stealth.

All right. This guy knows nothing about Moana, obviously, because she's got her oar in her hands now and if he tries to strike again he's literally going to lose his head. Or arm. Or something. So it's generosity, clearly, that makes Maui lift the guy up with one hand.

"Heya, buddy."

The guy's too angry to realize who he is, clearly, because he starts swiping at Maui instead. Maui holds onto his hair, pivots him away from Moana, and holds him at arm's length.

"Maui!" Moana shrieks, and a little glow of affection softens his expression inadvertently.

"Oh, hi Curly," he tosses over his shoulder. Then he winks. "Didn't see you there."

Moana drops her oar to punch him square in the shoulder. Despite himself, despite the furiously trembling man whose crown Maui's actively trying to dissuade himself from crushing beneath his palm, Maui grins at the feeling. The little bruises already forming around her eyes crinkle as she smiles at him. "When did you get here, why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I got here a couple of hours ago," he shrugs. Her suitor's progressed from trying to kick his chest to pounding on his arms, and he's more of a nuisance than anything. "Was trying to find you to tell you."

"Oh." Moana half-laughs, half-winces. "You caught me in the middle of a courtship."

Maui levels her with his least impressed stare, giving the mortal a good shake. He's shouting something that sounds pretty incensed but Maui doesn't pay him too much heed. "I may've been out for a couple centuries or so, but I'm pretty sure that's not how courtships are supposed to go, Moana."

This time, her expression is more wince than smile. "Yeah, this was a particularly bad one."

"Uh-huh." Maui switches hands, because his arm is getting tired. "So tell me, Curly," he says, keeping his voice deliberately light, "whaddya wanna do with this guy?"

"I haven't done anything!" Taika shrieks instantly. "This girl would not listen to my proposals and there was no other way to make her see reason!"

"Pro tip about relationships, bud," Maui interrupts him smoothly, hands clenching around this guy's hair and the sudden desire to just rip it all off, "you gotta respect each other to make it work."

"Oh and you would know so much about that," Moana snarks from beside him and drives her pointy elbow hard into his gut. "Mr. I-throw-people-off-boats."

"That was one time!"

"That was at _least_ a dozen times. Half within the first hour of our meeting."

Maui shrugs, because so long as he keeps smiling his hands won't accidentally close around this guy's neck. "Details! Gods, Curly. So serious. Anyway, Fishfeet. You got a sentence for this guy?" He squints over top of the trees, wiggles his feet into the ground to figure out how far he is from the sea. "I can probably hit the waves with 'im from here."

And whatever he did it must've been bad, because Moana genuinely looks like she's considering the offer before shaking her head. "Just put him down. I'll talk to my father, and Taika will leave in disgrace."

Maui takes a long look at her, shakes her suitor by the hair, eliciting a small stream of yelps. "You sure you don't want me to just get rid of 'im? I'm sure he won't be missed."

Moana crosses her arms and glares at him. That's Curly-face for a no. Sighing, Maui drops him none-too-gently on the ground. "Okay, buddo," he says, patting the guy's shoulders so hard his knees buckle.

Moana flashes him a quick smile, tainted a little bit (okay, a lot a bit) by the fact that one of her eyes is closing inadvertently. Then when she steps forward there's no smile in her face at all.

"You will return to Motunui," Moana intones clearly, turning back toward this guy. He keeps looking back from Maui to Moana and staring at the latter with fear in his eyes. Maui would feel bad for him, he really would, except he kinda hit Moana and that's hands-down the fastest way to destroy any chance of sympathy from Maui's corner.

"You will leave my village and you will not return. Should your people wish to communicate further with mine, you will send your younger sister with your message. You, Taika, are no longer welcome here." She drops into an ironic half-bow, but the glare never leaves her bruised eye as she watches him. "Good day."

* * *

"Who even was that guy?" Maui demands later, and Moana fears briefly for the integrity of the bowl of coconut oil he has clenched between his fists. Too much strength and he's gonna crack the husk right down the middle.

"Taika," Moana replies, prodding at her eye with one inquisitive finger. It should hurt more, probably, but the satisfaction of nailing her irritating suitor in the face far outweighs any pain she might feel. Even now she speaks his name with a viciously pleased smirk. "One of my suitors. He decided he wanted to...use other means to convince me."

A little splinter appears on the side of the bowl, and Moana pries it away from Maui's hands with a stern glare. He remains stubbornly unaffected by her look. "That's not - " Maui fumes, hands clenching into fists at his side, " - you let him off easy, Curly. I should smite that guy. What's the point of having demigodly powers if I don't _use them_."

"I think I did a good enough number on him," Moana grins, elbowing him in the side playfully.

He looks at her and his rage only seems to smolder further, his gaze tracing a little ring around the bruises already forming around her face. She sticks out her chin and returns his glare with one of her own. "I'm fine, Maui."

"No, you're really not. Look at your face!"

"I know, I know. A sight for the ages," she winks, and then winces.

Maui's lips twist sharply downward. "You should be taking this more seriously, Moana. He - he tried to _kill_ you."

"It didn't feel like a killing thing, though," she muses, that grin still curling along her face. "I've been almost-murdered enough times to tell. It felt more like a maim-or-seriously-injure thing, y'know?"

"Moana."

Moana sticks out her tongue, gestures him through the tapestries surrounding the healing _fale_. When he ducks down, she drops the cloth on his back and darts through the next opening, snickering.

"Ha ha, Curly," he says dryly. Moana looks back at him innocently, eyes wide, and settles herself on the ground.

After a weak glare, Maui sits in front of her, righting the bowl gently in his hands. His fingers, clearly unaccustomed to dealing with oil, prod at the base of the bowl, like smearing it all up his thumb is gonna help. With a rueful snort, Moana shows him how to dab a bit on his finger, like so, then lets him try it himself. He reaches for her face, worry creasing it like he's afraid he's gonna hurt her, and Moana shuffles forward on the ground to put her face in easier arm's reach.

"So I get back to Motunui, right," she keeps talking, both to distract him and herself, "and honestly, it was fantastic. We never lost that voyaging spirit! So it was surprisingly easy to teach everyone how to sail. It took us six months or so, of course, but I think that's normal."

"Uh-huh," he replies distractedly. Then he falls uncharacteristically silent, and Moana balls her hands over her knees, preparing herself.

But Maui's hands are unexpectedly gentle against her face. So much so that she almost thinks he's not touching her at all. But when she cracks open an eye, just the tiniest amount, he's got his tongue stuck out a little bit between his lips and his whole face is contorted in concentration.

Huh. Who would've guessed that the Demigod of the Wind and Sea had a soft spot. Stifling a soft smile, Moana keeps rambling. "There were dozens - no, hundreds! - of people who showed up to my first lesson. Everyone really genuinely wanted to learn! So we set sail about a month ago, and pretty quickly found a couple of the other islands."

The cooling touch of the oil spreads slowly from the top of her eyelid out toward her temple. Maui cups her cheek with his other hand, trying to keep her face still. She resists the urge to stick her tongue out at him, but that's only because she couldn't see his reaction with her eyes closed and what's the point of getting a rise out of a demigod if you can't see his response? None, that's what.

With his hands warm against the side of her face, Moana continues her tale. "And I didn't really want suitors, of course. No point tying myself down to someone who hardly knows how to sail," she scoffs. "But then Mom and Dad pointed out how useful it would be, y'know, to establish trading partners. They were right, of course. So I told them I'd try it for a bit. It worked pretty well until Taika got here - ouch," she hisses, wincing as his finger jabs just a bit too firmly into her eye.

"Sorry," he recoils instantly, pulling his hands from his face. When she cracks open her eyes, wincing, his eyes are wide in his face. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," she waves him off. After working her jaw for a couple of seconds, she closes her eyes pointedly again. He takes the hint and rests his hand against her cheek, reapplies gentle pressure to her face. "Anyway, most of 'em were good guys. But I just...don't want to get married, y'know? So I talked it over with my parents and told them I didn't want to accept anyone just yet. Most of them were okay with that decision," she explains, tilting her chin forward a bit as Maui's fingers work their way around to the bottom half of her eye. "Think it helps that I've saved the entire world. So most of them left, but Taika just refused to go. I was gonna talk to him, see if I could get him to get out, and he...didn't want to go. You came in right when he decided he wanted to stay at all costs."

"By attacking you, huh," he finishes, and though Maui's straining for lightheartedness she can hear the furious steel in his tone.

"And see how well that worked out for him!" she crows, grinning fiercely at him even though she can't see him. "He's never gonna try _that_ again!"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. You did a good number on him, Curly." Maui leans back, releases her face.

She blinks her eyes open steadily, grimaces a bit as pain shoots through one of them, then smiles at Maui. "Thanks for this."

"No problem, kiddo. I, uh, wish I coulda gotten here earlier."

Moana shrugs at him, pulls herself to her feet. "You would've just killed him."

The pause before Maui responds with a slow "Yeah," is far too long for Moana's comfort.

He's considering it. "That would've caused war," Moana points out.

He pouts like Moana's stolen _paifala_ from him, bottom lip stuck out and everything. Alarm bells start clanging in her head, loudly. "And that's a bad thing."

"Oh c'mon, Curly," Maui grumbles, "you could have taken them - "

" _No_ , Maui. We're not killing anyone," Moana says, and then dissolves into helpless snickers. "T-that's absolutely not - "

"Okay but think about it, Curly," he interrupts, slinging an arm around her shoulders. "The idea does have merits. Merit number one: you'd never have to deal with his tribe again. Merit number two: ...okay so there's no actual merit number two. Except maybe that you'd get to kill the guy."

Moana shakes her head ruefully and punches him. It's a weak hit but she doesn't care because her face hurts from laughing.

It's good to see him again.

"I'm kicking you off this island," she jokes when her laughs subside. "Murdering is really frowned upon here."

"Okay, but. Is it frowned upon if the _Chief_ is the one doing the murdering."

"Yes, it is! And even if it wasn't, I'm technically not Chief yet. That's still my dad."

"We could make a convincing case," Maui responds. "If I want to kill this guy imagine what your dad wants to do to him. Or - even better, Curly, your mom. Ooh, I bet she's terrifying when she's mad."

"Maui!"

"Just sayin', Curly! We're all behind you, just give us the word."

Moana shakes her head ruefully, smiling wide enough to make the space behind her eyes ache. She doesn't mind too much, though.

Without Maui she'd probably be with her parents, upset and confused and wondering where she'd misstepped. But with Maui she can be just as gregarious, as proud, as brash as she wants to be. With Maui, there's no need to hide. She can joke about these sorts of things, can laugh at the prospect of murder, all while being tended to gently by fingers five times the size of her own.

"Tell you what," she says slyly, "I'll sleep on it."

Maui hesitates for the briefest of seconds. _Will you be here in the morning?_ she's asking, and even half a year out of her company he understands her still.

Then he shrugs, grins easily down at her. "'Course, Curly. Can't wait to hear your answer."


	12. Chapter 12

Prompt: You've already done a fic for Moana with PTSD, but surely Maui has that too. A thousand years alone? Look up the effects of solitary confinement on people, it's not nice. Then you have him jumping into dealing with people all over again, all at once, old-new things everywhere all the time without stop - Moana helping him with that, as he helps her, would be lovely.

* * *

"Hey, Chief Curly!"

"That's Chief to you!"

"Whatever. Found something for you!"

From atop the mast, Moana looks around herself indignantly, trying to spot the island before she has to slip on down the mast and admit defeat. The horizon yields nothing to her eyes, no telltale smudges atop the waves.

"Give it up, Curly," Maui says from below her, and she can almost hear the impish grin in his voice.

"Hush," she mutters. Then she has to concede, sliding down the polished wood.

"You just gotta keep your eyes open," he starts instantly, smirking at her. "You gotta have the eyes of a hawk - "

"You can shapeshift into an actual hawk. That's not fair."

"That's beside the point!" he waves her aside gleefully. "Anyway, see right over there?"

Moana follows his arm out toward the horizon, absently crossing the deck of their largest waka until she can make out the small orangeish smudge on the horizon. It's absolutely tiny, just the faintest speck of bright color almost swallowed by the glittering light off the waves.

"Yeah!" Moana beams.

"There we go then," Maui snorts, patting her on the shoulder briefly before shimmying behind her toward the underbelly of the boat. "Set course for the orange, Curly."

"You don't get to tell me what to do," Moana replies automatically, contesting more out of habit than with any actual fire. "I'm the Chief of this canoe."

"Yeah, and I'm the demigod steering it." He nudges Heihei off the hatch with his foot before sticking his arm into the compartment. "You got nothing on me, Chosen One."

After several moments of rummaging around, he procures an overripe banana. In typical Maui fashion, he doesn't bother peeling it, just takes a huge bite out of the top half, chewing with crunchy gusto. Moana looks at him with disgust. Deciding that the argument's not worth it when Maui's got a little bit of banana dribbling out of the corner of his mouth, Moana opts instead to steer their fleet toward the island. A quick word and a point to Kara, who's _actually_ steering their _waka_ , plus a blow on the conch from Rui starts their entire fleet swivelling westward.

Her people disembark onto the new island with ease, spilling eagerly onto the sandy shore. Her father, relieved to be on solid ground once more, takes over setting up camp, directing his people with as confidently on this strange new island as he would in the comfort of Motunui.

Moana steps off the _waka_ , tethers the largest one to the ground. For a few moments she looks out over this new island. It's shockingly barren. Nothing too much to see - a couple of sparse shrubs, a tree over there in the distance. She frowns. They won't end up here for too long, probably, since she can't see a speck of food or water on its shores.

With a small grunt she winds the last of the rope around a nearby boulder, then inspects the rest of their boats to ensure that each has been similarly stowed. Satisfied that their fleet isn't going to drift off behind her back, Moana looks toward the island.

Her father is in the middle of splitting up groups for exploration, leaving the rest to dip their feet in the cool shores, the children to race around the island in a footrace built in the sand. Intent on coercing him into flying over the island, make sure it's not occupied, Moana searches for Maui, only to find that he's not with her people.

Maui's not typically a hard guy to find, given the full-body tattoos and hulking muscles. Frowning, Moana peers closer to the villagers aboard the shore, trying to make out her tattooed demigod. Odd, he's just not there.

A sneaking suspicion strikes her, and Moana leaps lightly back onto the waka. For several seconds she sees nothing but wood and sturdy rope, until she catches a glimpse of his back behind the huge central mast.

Odd. Moana approaches him carefully, eyebrows creased. Why hasn't he disembarked? "Maui?" she calls tentatively.

There's no response. As she gets closer she realizes that he's actually sitting against the mast, sort of hunched in on himself. Alarm shoots through her, and her footsteps lengthen into strides. "Hey," she tries, "Maui, are you okay?"

She reaches out to touch his shoulder, and he jerks away without looking toward her. "Fine," he grits.

Perplexed, Moana sits in front of him, facing toward the island. She can see her father looking toward her with a similar expression on his face, but when he makes toward the waka, undoubtedly to offer aid, she waves him away with a swipe of her hand.

"Don't you want to go explore?"

"Think I'm gonna sit this one out, Moana," he says, and chances a glance up to her. Though his tone is light the cheer is forced and there are shadows dancing around the corners of his eyes. He looks tired, tired even though she knows for a fact that he slept just last night - enough rest to last him for another week.

"What's wrong?" she asks quietly.

"Nothing."

"Maui, c'mon, I know there's something bothering you. You can tell me."

"I said I don't want to get off this boat."

"Okay, that's fine," she replies, wondering why he doesn't just turn into a dolphin and swim away if he wants to be away from here so badly, "but why?"

"Because I said I didn't want to!" he snaps, volume jumping, and when he looks at her again his features are set in a glare. His hands are clenched into fists at his sides. "I don't need to defend myself to you."

"I'm not asking you to defend yourself," Moana retorts sharply, taken off-guard. "I just don't understand - "

"I'm not getting off this boat, Moana. End of discussion."

"But why - "

"Gods, Moana, you ask so many _questions_! Because I don't want to!"

"Why are you being so rude?" she asks, perplexed and irritated at the same time. "What's gotten into you?"

"Nothing's _gotten into me_ ," he repeats mockingly, and on his chest Mini-Maui waves wildly in her direction. "You're just being annoying!"

The little tattoo points toward a pile of rocks that looks vaguely familiar, but Moana doesn't care. "Fine!" Confused and stung, Moana lifts herself to her feet. "Fine, sit on this boat and mope, see if I care!"

"I will!"

With a frustrated sigh, Moana turns sharply and stalks off the _waka_. Let him simmer in obstinacy, see if _she_ cares.

She's got better to do anyway. Even though they won't stay long, they'll be here at least overnight. While it's unimpressive there's at least an island to explore, and besides she'll want to teach her young wayfinders how to navigate the currents around an island. As of now, she, Maui and Kara are the only navigators that can pull a boat toward shore, and she intends to fix that problem.

She's at the prow of the boat, facing the ocean, when she realizes. Staring out at the island, so dry and barren and lifeless, Moana too late makes the connection between this pile of rocks and Maui's. Of course - _that_ was what Mini-Maui was trying to show her.

Moana pivots on her heel, intent on returning to Maui and trying again, maybe a bit gentler this time. She gets about halfway to the mast, quieting her footsteps nearly to silence, when she stops again.

Maui looks… terrible. Now that she's gone he's somehow curled even tighter in on himself, and he's got his head in his hands, every bit of his posture screaming defeat. She doesn't want to think about how much of the shaking in his shoulders is from her departure, and she kinda wants to smack her head. Of course he looks worse, she just _stormed off_.

She considers going up to him and just apologizing, but discards that idea just as quickly. This island's clearly bothering him, they can't have this conversation here. So within moments, Moana formulates a plan, strides off the boat.

Feet once more on the sand, Moana hurries toward the ropes binding their smallest canoe in place. She unties the knot with ease, brushes off her mother's alarmed inquiries and hops onto the wood. With a few deft movements, she navigates the smaller canoe around the side of their largest one, slipping silently underneath the deck. In seconds she is positioned beneath the stern, facing away from the island.

She knots the binding-rope loosely around one of the skates of the large _waka_ , careful to keep herself for now out of the view of the mast. Then, smaller canoe so secured, she clambers aboard the deck.

He's shaking against the mast, actually shaking, like a leaf blown about in the wind. Every instinct of Moana's flares up again, starts clamoring for her attention, because something is very very wrong. For a second panic freezes her movements, because even though she doesn't understand what's happening this feels big, all huge claws and towering movements, like there's something holding him captive far larger than one mortal alone, like this is one enemy against which she can do nothing.

But this is also Maui, so she has to try. Taking a deep breath, Moana makes her footsteps loud again and plants herself in front of him. He looks up, clearly surprised, and the panicked glimmer in his eyes hits her like a punch to the gut.

"C'mon," she says firmly, thrusting a hand in his direction. It takes him so off-guard that he reaches back out, only for a moment, before reconsidering; but it's long enough for Moana to wrap a hand around his wrist and tug him to his feet.

She nearly throws out her shoulder doing so but shrugs it off, half-leading half-dragging him toward the stern. "Where are we going, Moana?"

"Out," she replies quickly, then points toward the small canoe waiting for them over the stern. The pathetic island stays solidly behind them, out of Maui's line of sight. "Get on."

"We can't just leave."

She leaps from the stern, then turns to face him expectantly. Hesitation is clear on his face, like he doesn't know whether he should stay or go, but then she flicks a wrist at him in a clear _go on, then_ motion, and though there's still anger and that weird sharp thing covering him like an aura he lands on the deck of the boat.

"What's this about, Moana?" he asks, but Moana doesn't have an answer for him quite yet. Instead she unknots the rope from the larger canoe, tugs at the halyard to fill their sails with wind, settles herself at the stern to catch the current in her oar.

He asks again, sharper, then plants himself in front of her. Every inch of him demands an answer. He hisses an accusation between his teeth, something loud and jarring, and Moana knows that this new island wavers behind them in his line of sight.

"Where are we going?"

"Away from that island," she admits, trying to squint over his shoulders at the caps of the waves in front of them.

A little frisson runs through him at the words, and for a second panic flits through his expression before he reigns it in tightly. "Is there a reason you've just kidnapped me off a boat and onto another?"

 _You could just swim back_ her tongue almost says but she clamps down on that response at the last moment because an image of the tattoo on his back keeps swimming in front of her eyes, overlaying frustratingly with the very real waves she's confronting right now. "Yes."

"Then what is it?"

"Give me a second," she replies, frowning in concentration at the ocean.

"You don't get a moment," he hisses, sticking his face in front of her own. "What are you doing?"

"Getting you away - " she starts to explain, but in that moment he grabs her oar, fed up with her non-answers. "Hey!"

"I want to know what you're doing," he demands, voice low and gritted, eyes hooded in the shadows of his face.

"And I want my oar back," she replies, adrenaline thrumming through her veins. "It'll be like two more minutes, Maui, please."

He stares at her for a long moment, lips curling up in a sneer. Then he finally shrugs his shoulders, slams the oar into her chest. She lets out a huff at the impact, more surprised than really hurt. Even though it's probably going to bruise later.

She looks up to say something else, something definitely not angry and a little bit hurt, but he's got his back to her and standing with his arms crossed in the shadow of their sail.

 _It's okay_ , Moana wills herself to think. _He's not himself._

That much is clear. Even without seeing his face she can tell how his shoulders hunch through his hair, his arms stiff at his side like the mast whose shade he rests in.

Something is very, very wrong, and Moana does not know if she can fix it.

When it's little more than a smudge on the horizon again, Moana undoes the sail. Her oar drops against the deck as she slips the halyard in a loose knot around the stake, letting them drift to a slow stop against the open seas.

This far into the ocean, leagues above the seafloor, the water is calm. The waves, when strong enough to peak, lap gently against the side of her canoe. Far above their heads the sun shines, casting stark shadows against the wood of her deck.

It should be peaceful.

Absently, Moana rubs a hand over her collarbone. Then, sighing angrily at herself, she shakes her head and crosses the deck. "Okay," she starts quietly, looking up at Maui, "what happened?"

"Nothing happened."

"You weren't getting off the boat, Maui," she points out reasonably. "You must've - "

"What do you know about what I was doing?" Maui shouts, then, suddenly furious, face terrifyingly close to hers. "What do you think you know, Moana?"

This isn't working. He's in one of those moods where words won't work, speeches won't break his shields. So instead of replying, Moana slows her own panicked breathing and wraps her arms around his chest.

He tenses, every line and muscle on him stiff with _something_. Probably anger. For a second she's convinced he's going to actually throw her off the boat and she takes a deep breath, readying herself for the shock of the water. It's probably irrational to hold on harder like that will help, but she does. Hugs him tighter, holding onto him with all her strength, putting her hopes and prayers into the embrace.

But the rude sensation of ocean water against her back never comes. Instead, there's a clattering like Maui's dropped his hook, and all the tension rushes out of him. He slumps forward over her, resting his cheek on the crown of her head, and suddenly he's holding her just as tightly as she is. Her feet dangle off the ground as air leaves her lungs in a whoosh, kinda unable to breathe, but she doesn't dare point out that she can almost feel her ribs splintering because he's shaking again against her and he needs this.

Moana devotes a couple seconds to being able to breathe again, then nestles her head into the crook of his neck. "It's okay," she tells him, more his collarbone.

And it's like he'd been waiting to hear those words because he exhales sharply, one quick shuddering breath that sounds all the way through his chest. "Sorry," he whispers over her head.

"It's fine." She pulls back a little bit, straining to let her feet touch the ground again, and he puts her down gently. She winces, rubbing her chest with two fingers, and stops when she catches him staring at the motion devastatedly. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to, I mean I totally understand - well I don't understand the thing that's bothering you but I do understand if you don't want to talk about it, but…if you want to talk to someone, I'm here."

"I can't - I just - " he swallows heavily, keeping his gaze trained pointedly on her, not looking behind her where she knows that island lies. Even though it's well out of view. "It - that island, it…."

"Reminded you of yours," she guesses, and knows her instincts are correct when he flinches.

"It was so long," he blurts. "A thousand years, Moana, and there was no one on that damned island except for me. I thought I was going to go crazy, just talking to myself. If not for Mini-Maui and the ocean, I probably would've. Look - Moana, the first time that I saw the ocean, you know, its head, I thought I was insane. Genuinely. Same thing when I saw the boat, I thought for sure I was hallucinating that all those years were catching up with me. And now back out here, with all these people all at once - you've seen it, I don't - when your orators all gather around your fires and tell stories," he says, and his words are getting faster and faster and more frenzied and his chest is heaving with panic, "I can't deal with that, it's just too much and you've seen how I always leave because I can't stay. And most of the time it's not that bad, it really isn't, but then we found that - that island and it all came back and it's stupid, I know, but I couldn't help thinking, what if it happens again? What if I get stuck again? I can't do that again, Moana, I really can't - " he says, and his voice breaks so suddenly it scares her. His shudders overtake him and he sinks to the deck of the boat, visibly trembling but unable to close his eyes, unable to tear his gaze away from the horizon.

Moana wedges herself purposefully between Maui and that island, so that he's staring at her knees instead of the horizon, then drops into a kneel in front of him. "You won't have to," she promises him quietly, rashly.

"You don't know that," he grates out, words ashy and pale like him, all jagged syllables and hitched breaths and he's not crying even though his words sound like he is.

Moana throws caution to the wind and shuffles closer to him, knees scraping against the wood.

"Yes I do," she replies, and places a palm over his chest, right where Mini-Moana waves, engraved forever on his chest. A small smile seeps over her face and he looks up at the touch, part shock and part hope. "Even when - even when I'm gone, I'll still be with you."

Maui collapses, and Moana leans forward to catch him too fast to see his face after it scrunches in on itself but when she wraps her arms around his neck and holds him she can feel water on her shoulders. It's not raining.

"I don't know what it's like, not really," she confesses, quietly, as he latches onto her with equal desperation, pulling her closer to him and burying his face in her shoulder. She pats his back soothingly, her hands over the tattoo of him as a child, cast out and abandoned to the sea, alone. "But I will do everything in my power to make sure that nothing like that happens to you again, Maui," she promises, and maybe it's foolish, thinking that one small mortal could save a demigod.

But maybe it's not.

"Even if I had to fight Tamatoa again," she continues quietly, holding him as he shakes, "even if I have to sail across the entire ocean. Even if I have to come back down from Tagaloa himself."

Somehow, impossibly, he holds her tighter. Yeah, she's gonna wake up with one hell of a respiratory issue, but that's okay. He's curled in on her like she's a shell, a shield, like he doesn't want to look up ever again, so she just keeps rubbing little circles into his back and lets him shake himself to pieces in her arms.

"I mean it, Maui." She readjusts her grip on him, wrapping more of her arms around his shoulders. "There is nowhere you could go that I won't be with you."

And he doesn't know what her words mean, not really, but some of their import hits him because he looks up at her like he's seeing her for the first time. She smiles back and does nothing in response but hold him tighter.

* * *

Getting Moana back is a logistical challenge. However Maui insists he's fine, he can deal with it, like he wasn't breaking in her arms less than ten minutes ago, Moana refuses to let him near that island again. It's a bad idea on all counts and the fact that Maui is insisting he's ready is just another warning in Moana's mind, blown like a conch right in her ear.

This problem is going to merit quite a few late-night fireside talks, some probably too akin to this one for comfort. But Moana files that thought away and heads for a conch instead. Because if Moana can't sail back - and no, she's not leaving Maui stranded as a dolphin in the middle of the ocean waiting for her to come back, that's possibly an even worse idea than heading back _toward_ the island - she can get her fleet to come to her.

It takes her mother and father less than twenty minutes to speed around the side of their canoe in one of the middling-sized boats in their fleet. Moana leaps aboard their boat to convey, briefly, what's transpired. It's remarkably little work to persuade them hold off restocking on that pitiful island and just hightail it outta there, search instead for something a bit greener. (And if Moana's father overexaggerates just how useless that island is, just how little they could possibly glean from it, well. Moana's certainly not going to point it out.)

Her parents wheel back around to assemble the rest of the fleet. Moana gives them two hours until they're ready to set sail. She turns back to Maui, finds him asleep on the boat.

Despite the tension of earlier, a small smile worms across her face. Even in human form, he sleeps like a hawk sometimes, sitting upright with his head tucked in his chest. Moana stifles another snort, because she can almost picture him with feathers, before smothering a yawn of her own.

Two hours, though. That's good time for a nap.

So she sits next to him, leans back against his shoulder, and drops off to sleep as well.

And if Moana and Maui find each other in dreams - well. Moana had meant it.

There is nowhere he could go that she would not be with him.


	13. Chapter 13

Look, an honest effort at fluff! Fun fact: I wrote this when I was actually suffering a migraine. Probably should've gone to sleep, but I hadn't written yet that day, so this is the result of me shamelessly inflicting my own pain on my favorite characters.

Also, in _Moana: Island Life_ , it's confirmed canon that Moana sometimes forgets to eat her own breakfast because she's too busy worrying about her own people. Chill, Curly, they're not gonna die if you drink a coconut or two.

* * *

His first clue is a wince. It's a little thing, just the smallest movement in the corner of his peripheries, and it's gone when he glances beside him, but he catches it all the same.

"Something on your mind, Curly?"

"Huh?" Moana responds, all of her earlier eloquence gone, and Maui takes that as a no. Makes sense. Even an orator like Moana has to run dry of clever words sometimes, and after her incredible display of diplomatic navigation inside that _fale tele_ he's not surprised she's hit her cap.

"Ah, nothing," he says, waving an airy hand in her direction. "Anyway, now that's done, whaddya say to a day on the water, huh?"

Moana's face lights up, all eagerness and anticipation…and then falls. "I can't," she replies quietly. "I have stuff to do."

"Is it Chiefly stuff or is it, like, coconut-husking stuff. Because you have people for the latter."

"It's Chiefly stuff," she replies, "and just because I have people to do the latter doesn't mean I can't help."

Maui grins. It's an old argument - one that he's probably never going to win, but a good one all the same. "You're Chief, kid. You can't do _all_ of that drudge work, you gotta maintain a certain level of decorum! Y'know, chin up and back straight."

"That's called _arrogance_ , Maui," Moana retorts, grinning, "and that's actually very unbecoming on Chiefs. It's a good thing you aren't one."

"I would be an excellent Chief. And don't get off-topic. What sorts of Chiefly things do you have to do?"

"Uh…"

"Not more negotiation."

"No!" Moana replies, just a little bit too quickly.

Maui narrows his eyes in her direction. "C'mon, Curly, you gotta take a break."

They're passing the groves, now, and one of Motunui's songs swells around them like the tide, filling the air with sharp drumbeats and wild tones. It makes Maui laugh, because one of the little kids looks like they're trying to teach themself a _haka_ , but he gets his second clue because Moana does that little wince-thing again.

Once they're out of range of the music, Maui turns toward Moana. She stops, but it's kind of unsteady, like she expected more resistance turning than the air provided. He tamps down on the urge to reach out and steady her shoulders.

"What?" she demands.

"There's something wrong."

"No there isn't."

"Yes there is. You're not feeling well."

"I'm feeling fine," Moana protests. "I just have a lot of work to do, okay - "

"No, actually," Maui says, and this time he really does set his hands on her shoulders, wheeling her into an about-face toward her parents' _fale_ , "you have nothing to do! Surprise, Curly. A full day free of Chiefly duties."

"But - "

"No buts," he says, and he knows he's doing something right because she's not actively trying to wriggle out of his grasp. She's just kinda letting herself be dragged in front of him. They're probably a spectacle, a demigod dragging a Chief toward her parents' _fale_ , but he doesn't much care. "Tell me what's wrong or I'm dropping you off with your mother."

 _That_ gets her to push against his hands. "Honestly, Maui, I'm fine - "

"So you're just flinching at light and music for no reason, huh," he replies dryly, squinting through the sunlight toward the Chief's house. Sina's probably not actually _in_ her room at this exact moment, and it says something that Curly hasn't realized that yet. "Oh look at me, I'm Moana and I'm totally fine, just in some sort of pain from the sun and the drums, huh."

"Yes." Then, "Wait, no, Maui, that's not - seriously, it's just a little headache."

"A little headache. A little headache that makes you stumble over your own feet." And not protest quite so vehemently as normal toward being dragged around, a little headache that Maui suspects is keeping Moana off the water.

He's met _monsters_ that could do less to keep Moana off the water, so this _little headache_ is assuredly not quite so little.

He's running through a mental list of places on Motunui that less bright than the shoreline and less noisy than a shaded coconut grove when he spies a waterfall on the front side of the mountain. That gives him an idea, and as Curly's listing halfhearted arguments as to why exactly she needs to run herself into the ground trying to do work for her people Maui picks her up and deposits her on his shoulders.

Her protestations take on an entirely different tone, more yelping and high-pitched from the lower strings of earlier, but he knows he's doing the right thing because she let out a little gasp when he first picked her up like the movement was painful.

Yep. Definitely not normal. She's lucky to have such a kind, considerate, caring demigod looking after her.

"You rude, interfering, meddlesome demigod," Moana hisses from above his head.

Maui chuckles, fastens his hands around her ankles. She's leaned forward over his head, arms tight around his forehead and hands pulling painfully at his hair, but because he's such a kind person, he lets her yank.

It's an easy stride to the Cavern of the Ancestors. Or, it would be normally. But Curly's "little headache" has her wincing when he moves too fast, so he ends up more ambling than jogging. After a little while she rests her head against his, digging her face into the back of his skull with her eyes squeezed shut. For a very brief, very irrational second, Maui kinda wants to murder the sun. Just for kicks. Clearly not at all related to the mortal on his shoulders pretending she's not in pain.

It's a good thing he knows Moana so well, really, because this would - and, apparently, did - fool anyone else.

Moana's sigh of relief is audible when his footsteps finally track around the back route into the Cavern of the Ancestors, all cool air and dim lights and no noise. She untenses her death-grip on his head, sits back a little bit. He pats her ankles. "Feeling better, Curly?"

She hems and haws for a second before conceding with a muted "Yeah."

"Uh-huh. Thought so." He kneels by the shore and waits for her to unlatch far enough to lower herself on the ground. And, surprise of surprises, she practically melts off of him in relief, slumping onto the sandy ground. "How's that little headache treating you?" he asks, resting his face in one smug hand.

Moana groans something unflattering at him and pulls herself into a sitting position to mirror his. "Getting worse the more you talk."

Maui snorts, waves her away. "My face cures all ailments, Fishfeet. Take a good long look."

He's fully expecting some biting retort, maybe some rude remark about his eyes being scrunched close around his nose, but instead gets a halfhearted huff of air that could maybe substitute as a laugh on a good day.

"All right, kid, what's wrong?"

There's a long, long pause, during which Moana takes a good long pointed look at him. "The chin, probably," she responds. "It's too flat. Curved chins are definitely better."

Maui takes this opportunity to prod her none-too-gently in the shoulder. "I mean with _you_ , kid."

She shrugs, looks away from him a bit. "You know those headaches, the ones where the sun hurts and so does, well, loud noises?"

"No," he says honestly.

He can see her clamp down on the urge to stick out her tongue. "Well, it happens to us mortals," she says, and settles for jabbing him in the side again. "I've got one of them now."

"Oh." Sounds painful. "How do you fix it?"

Another shrug. "You don't really," she replies wryly, digging an absent knuckle into her temple. "They only go away with time, or sleep."

"What does it feel like?" he asks with morbid fascination. Sometimes he forgets just how fragile mortals tend to be, and then Moana unintentionally reminds him and he doesn't think she realizes just how much he really hates these unwelcome reminders. Because this isn't something he can fight off. He just has to wait.

Understandably, as a demigod once stranded on a barren island for a thousand years, Maui kinda hates waiting.

Moana purses her lips, lost in thought. She breaks once to wince briefly before hastily rearranging her face at the sight of his. "You know how, when you press on your wrist, you can feel your own heartbeat," she explains, tapping his huge wrist with two small fingers. "During one of these you can actually feel your heartbeat but inside your skull. It's like your blood is pushing against the sides of your brain," she says, flicking her own head gently to demonstrate, "and it pulses. Painfully."

Then she looks up at him and laughs at his distraught expression. "It's not too bad - well, no, it is pretty bad. But it's fun to think about! Your heart's trying to talk to you. Plus there are another annoying things too, like when I stand up too fast I almost throw up, and sometimes when that happens I can't see, and one time I actually passed out." She snorts, like this is funny. "Scared my father half to death!"

In that exact moment, Maui decides that Moana is never leaving this cavern ever again. Also, the sun is the next big fat red name on his hit list. "Okay," he says, and he'd like it noted that his voice is remarkably cool (and if he keeps his volume down to about half the usual, well, it's only respectful to be a bit more subdued in the presence of the ancients), "okay, you're going to sleep right now."

"Oh yeah, that too," she says, and Maui just near throws his hands in the air. "I can't go to sleep either."

"Is your brain _trying_ to kill you?"

"Not actively, no. But it's fine, it'll go away in a little bit."

"Is a little bit a couple of seconds or a couple of days, Curly?"

Moana pauses way too long for comfort. By the time she formulates a response, Maui's already on his feet and striding toward one of their canoes. "Maybe a day - where are you going?"

Maui mutters something under his breath, about crazy villages and their even more senseless leaders, before ducking into the hull of one of the canoes too old and dilapidated to be considered seaworthy. It takes a couple of seconds of rummaging through seaworn baskets with stains on their sides and gaping holes where the wind bit away at their bindings, but eventually Maui comes up with a reasonably-intact sail and a small grunt of victory.

He unfurls it, standing astride the canoe, shakes the dust off of it and pleased when it doesn't disintegrate in his hands. It's a pretty thing, dyed with an orange that was probably vibrant a couple hundred years ago, full of swirls, of dots like the stars and blocks like the clouds overhead. He folds the sail over roughly in his hands and drags it back toward Moana, who's quite clearly torn between leaping to her feet and investigating what he was doing and staying put on the ground.

At least he doesn't have to convince her to lie down. Pretending that he's not doing anything out of the ordinary, because - like he said, he's a considerate guy, okay - he spreads the cloth out over her. "You. Sleep. Now."

Moana laughs at him, then pulls the _tapa_ farther over her shoulder, rests her head on one arm. "Thanks, Maui."

Mini-Maui beams at that. Maui's face is much less eloquent. "Yeah. Well. No problem, Moana."

She smirks at him, snuggling deeper into the sand. He drops into a sitting position next to her, for the first time uncertain of what to actually do with himself. "What, no 'you're welcome'?" she singsongs.

"I, uh, figured a song wouldn't be the best. For your head."

Her wolfish grin just grows bigger. "Aww, how considerate - "

"Though if you're awake enough to make fun of me then _clearly_ you're feeling fine enough for a song - "

" - really touched that you would pause your lyrical prowess for my poor little head - "

" - make me regret it, Moana."

She snorts. "Heh. I would never."

Silence settles over them, like a blanket of his very own. It should probably be awkward, but it's just Moana, so it's not. Maui's really not tired at all, so he's just sitting on the sand like some oversized sentient boulder, wondering if he should take a nap of solidarity or go back to entertaining the fishermen down by the shore.

Then Moana winces, shutting an eye in pain, and that's not an expression Maui's ever seen Moana make and he's seen her getting roughed around by all sorts of monsters scuttling around the bottom of the seafloor, and in this aspect he's really not one for variety. He goes to make a jab about winking and wincing and it gets lost halfway in his throat. Maps and jokes. He should look into that.

"Okay," he says, half to himself and half to Moana. "Okay, no. I'm gonna go get your mom and she's gonna have some medicine of some sorts, right. I'll be back soon."

He's on his feet before the last of the words come out of his mouth, and he fully intends to leave, he really does, because he doesn't like watching Moana suffering and being literally useless, but then Moana sits up despite the grimace that flashes across her face and says "She won't have anything useful."

Oh, _great_. "Then what helps?" he asks, because his last possible avenue of aid has just been taken from him and it's frustrating, okay.

"Nothing," she says, then gestures toward the blanket. "You've already done more than enough."

Yeah, uh-huh, but the thing is Moana's still got that headache that apparently lets her commune with her own internal organs because it's so damn painful. "Is there anything else I can do?"

"Um…" Moana twists her mouth upward, thinking, "maybe a story?"

Huh. Okay, yeah, that's something he can do no problem. He sits back down, less reluctantly, and Moana gives this little sigh of relief, like that helps, like she's feeling better already. "I can do that," he says, then flexes, showing off his tattoos with a grin. "Take your pick, Curly."

She studies him for a long second, and an idea hits her. He can see it. Sees it occur to her and take root, because she does that little smirk-grin-thing that means she has an idea. "Any tattoo?"

Um. "Sure?"

"Any of them. No restrictions."

Maui runs through a mental map of his tattoos, trying to figure out which one could be so incriminating that she has to run through such judicial terms. The only one he'd be picky about is the one on his back, but he told her that story long ago. It's not like he hides things from her anymore. "Uh, okay."

"Good." She struggles upward, somehow still smiling, and jabs a finger at his chest. Right toward Mini-Moana. "That one."

Maui follows her finger slowly, like he's gonna find a different tattoo at the edge of her fingernail. "Moana, you already know that one."

Moana settles herself back on the sand, then rests her head smugly on his crossed legs, grinning mischievously up at him. "Yes, I do. I've told it too. But I've never heard you tell it."

Maui exchanges a longsuffering look with Mini-Maui and pointedly ignores Mini-Moana giggling up on his chest. Oh, sure, _both_ of the little Chiefs were in cahoots about this, and neither of them had bothered to inform their loyal demigods about their ploy. Yeah. Great way to show gratitude.

"You said I could pick any one," she needles, still grinning broadly, and how can he say no, really.

"Fine." On his lap, Moana closes her eyes in anticipation of his story. "So a long, long time ago, there was this petulant toddler that was really bad at following orders and too headstrong for her own good and too stubborn to be bothered keeping herself alive. And even though her wise father, the Chief of her village, told her - "

"I wasn't _that_ bad," she retorts indignantly, eyes flying open. "I was just curious!"

"Uh-huh, and somehow _self-preservation_ and _rule-following_ didn't factor into your curiosity, now did it. You just saw sparkly ocean and went 'Ooh, shiny!' and pedaled your tiny little legs toward it as fast as you could go."

Moana frowns at him, then punches him in the kneecap. "I was four."

"They start so young," he replies, wiping a mock-tear from his face. Then, to avoid another wholehearted punch against his kneecap, he keeps right on talking. "Anyway, so this small pipsqueak of a child motored her stubby feet toward the ocean. She impressed the ocean with her compassion and determination, it chose her, it gave her a bunch of pretty shells and then the literal most dangerous stone in existence, all of which she promptly dropped. The end."

The blistering look of exasperation with which Moana graces him needs no words. "This is the worst story you've ever told."

"Yeah, well, you're the worst audience, so - ow!"

Both Chiefs smack him at the same time. Swallowing a grin, Maui sighs theatrically, rubs his kneecap with overexaggerated motions. "Fine, fine. One retelling of the story of Moana, coming right up. Get nice and comfy, Curly, because this one's a long one."

For once, Moana actually heeds his advice, shuffling the sail further over her shoulders and snuggling the back of her head against his ankles. "I'm ready."

Maui takes a second to collect his thoughts, scooping up months of precious memories and teasing words out of them. Truth be told, the Cavern's not a bad place for storytelling - there's this steady drip-dripping of the water that sounds almost like rain atop the ocean, warm and refreshing, and a blueish tint to the walls that makes him almost feel like he's out on the sea again, tilting Moana's hand a bit to the side.

"So the little kid from earlier, she was the last in a long, long line of her ancestors. Voyagers, warriors, explorers, the like." Maui leans backward a bit so he doesn't have to crane his neck trying to speak directly to Moana. "Thing is, she didn't know it. So her grandmother - this wise crazy old lady who knew everything about her people - told her, one day. Took her to this very cavern. And in these sails, Curly," he says, gesturing expansively toward the rocky walls that surround them, "the young woman saw her own people.

"In that moment, the daughter of the Chief knew what she was meant to be. A voyager. She saw herself and the people that she loved atop the sea, exploring the unknown fearlessly. But her father, well, didn't quite see the same." That elicits a rueful snort from the voyager pillowed on his lap, and Maui glances down at her.

She's got her eyes closed, looking remarkably peaceful. It's still strange for Maui, seeing Moana so still, used as he is to the Moana who flits around their canoe like she was born with one foot in the waves, who leads with two lungs full of fresh island air and windpipes louder than log drums.

Her hair is scratchy and really not as soft as it looks - not nearly as soft as his own, of course - and he's genuinely afraid he's going to get his fingers caught on some errant knot and tug out some of the strands. But she closes her eyes in contentment as he runs her hands through her hair so Maui decides he'll deal with that problem if he gets to it.

Most of her hair is wedged between her shoulders and his legs, so Maui just takes the part that's not stuck between them and drapes it over his arms, combing through it awkwardly. It's a heroic feat of storytelling, doing justice to a tale so grand as this while also learning something new, but hey, there's no man better for the job of hero-ing than the Hero of All.

"The young voyager decided she had to go anyway. Encouraged by the words of her grandmother and guided by her spirit, she sailed off - with no practical training and literally nothing on her side except confidence and a bit of foolish optimism - set off to find the demigod that had cursed her island."

The recriminating flick that jars against his kneecap doesn't surprise him. He bites back a retort because well technically he's right, her island _was_ well and solidly cursed, but opts instead to just keep speaking. It's an old, old argument, and not one Maui ever expects to resolve. "She shipwrecked, because she was so terrible at wayfinding that the ocean had to literally drag her to where she needed to go - "

"Hey!"

"It's true," he shrugs remorselessly. "Anyway, she ends up in the right place, meets the demigod, he tries to kill her, she escapes her peril, and after a long and harrowing series of arguments convinces him to journey with her to voyage across the ocean and save the world."

Moana reaches behind her shoulders and, without opening her eyes, brushes the rest of her hair into his lap. Maui blinks down at her for a second, notes the faint smile curving up at her lips, and adds it to the pile in his arms.

"They get attacked by a bunch of Kakamora, and murdering little pirates steal the Heart. She gets it back. Somehow. Then she asks the demigod to teach her to sail, he says no because he's a big jerk - no protesting, kid, this is _my_ story - and then the ocean, because it's a deceiving little nuisance, knocks him out so that he's got no option but teach her to sail." Maui splits her hair into three parts, letting them rest over his knees and threading his fingers through the middle one.

"Then they jump into Lalotai, and the demigod almost gets eaten, which is gross and totally not a noble way to die," and something odd like a premonition passes over him at those words, "and the girl saves him by outwitting a coconut crab fifty times her size, and then drags him out of there and essentially saves his hiney."

Her breathing has settled into an even rhythm. Not quite the lulling tempo of sleep, but not completely awake, either. It strikes him again just how rare it is to see her so peaceful, so at ease with the world. She's different, he realizes abruptly, from the girl who grabbed him by the ear and demanded he save the world. Sure, she's still curious and energetic and maybe a bit too fearless - but she's older, now. Wiser and more sure, confident in what she does not yet know. Certain that she will find the answers if she looks hard enough.

"The chosen one then proceeds to tell the demigod that the ocean chose him, too, for a reason. Which," he snorts ruefully, "was not something he'd heard before. She inspired him.

"Still does, actually," he amends, and knows she's still awake because her smile gets a little bit bigger. "They spend a little bit of time reuniting him with his hook and everything's fine and dandy.

"He teaches her how to sail. She's a terrible voyager, of course, always knotting her ropes the wrong way and absolutely no idea how to read the currents, but she learns quickly and that's what matters in the end, he supposes. Doesn't hurt that she bounces around their canoe like this has been her biggest dream since she was a little kid.

"And then they arrive at Te Fiti," he says, and starts to think maybe this isn't the best story because Moana tenses, just a little bit, against his legs. "They battle the lava monster, get beaten, and the demigod runs away."

There are little recriminations dancing on her tongue like sparks of flame, fiery reassurances that however Maui blames himself it's Moana's fault too. He's heard them all before, so he just keeps talking. "He flapped off into the sky," he continues, brushing a hand over her forehead, and is gratified to see how she stills under his touch, eyes sliding closed again. "And, well, he was angry. Unfairly so. He flew for about half a day before he got tired and touched down on a nearby island."

This isn't a story Moana's heard before. This isn't a story anyone's heard before, actually. He keeps this little spot of shame close to him. It takes a real dangerous sort of pigheadedness to ignore how much Moana had grown to mean to him, and somehow, the Maui in this story had managed.

"This guy, he's got his conscience on his chest. Has a little depiction and itches and everything. And because he, like we determined earlier, is really stubborn, it took him another couple hours to stop ignoring him and actually listen.

"And once the demigod stops being stubborn and listens, well…turns out his tattoo had a couple of good things to say." He looks down to realize that Moana's not sleeping at all. Doesn't even have her eyes closed. Instead, she's watching him carefully, eyebrows knitted together in concern.

"You're supposed to be sleeping, Chosen One," he sighs, lifting his hand off her hair to pat the side of her face.

"What can I say," she shrugs, "it's a good story."

Of course she would want to hear this part of his story above all the others. He clears his throat, twisting his other hand gently through her hair.

"It took a little while for the demigod to really listen, as I was saying. Because demigods are different, right? We don't need anyone. Not even our own consciences," he snorts acerbically. "But his little tattoo dispelled that notion. Reminded him just how much the mortal had come to mean to him. Pointed out that, hey, she'd saved his hiney a couple of times over. And the demigod had to finally acknowledge that hey, his conscience had a good point. Because she had.

"From the Kakamora, from a murderous coconut crab, the list goes on. But even more than that - something his conscience didn't say - is that the girl saved him from himself. Showed him that he's worth something even without his powers. That - that even if he weren't a demigod, he would still be worth something." The sentiment grows overpowering, and Maui lets it weigh in the air for just long enough for his affection to work its way over to Moana, warming her chest like it does his, before he adds, "which isn't something he'd really been taught before, so. That was a novelty for him.

"So he goes back, saves her life. Then she saves the world. Restores life to the entire world, sails back to her village, teaches her people how to voyage again. The end." Maui sweeps her hair back over her shoulders, brushing his hands off. "Well, kid, how'd you like that one?"

"I loved it," Moana manages, words slurring and running together in sleep. She half-turns, resting her cheek against higher on his leg, arms tucked against her chest. "Best one yet."

" _Best_ \- ? Did you forget about, y'know, the creation of islands? Or how I slowed the sun for you mortals, or lifted the sky, or created coconuts, remember those, the _lifeblood of your civilization_ \- "

"Best one," Moana insists. Her eyes are closed and there's a tired content smile curving up at the edges of her mouth. "Best story."

"If you say so, Chosen One."

Maui's getting new wrinkles, he thinks, around the corners of his face that turn up with exasperated fondness. But then the exasperation fades off his face as he regards her, leaning forward again to rest a hand on the back of her head. It's rare to see her peaceful, and even though she can still feel that heartbeat thrumming through her own head, she looks unstressed in a way that Maui rarely gets to see. Even atop the ocean, there is something niggling at the corner of her mind; but in the Cavern, with Maui, she is completely carefree.

Or it could just be that she's fallen asleep. The thought elicits another rueful snort from him, and Maui settles himself comfortably against the sand of the cool blue cavern, so peaceful and content.

It's going to be a long day, but Maui doesn't mind.


	14. Chapter 14

Prompt: I have a prompt I can't find a good story of & don't trust myself to try & I just luv your minis. Maui & Moana on an adventure, or coming back from their latest one & one of the high tier deities meets them at Motunui or en route home & tells Moana she's being made a demigoddess. And Moana, instead of just accepting it & taking the shiny new weapon, argues & finally says okay so long as she can still be chief until she trains a replacement & her signed oar is made her demigodly weapon of choice.

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Here we go, the last of the _Minis_ series! In a startling move, Seren has edited exactly 0% of this fic. That's right, folks - the first ever Serenscribble that's not been looked over, not one bit!

I hope you enjoy this final installment. :)

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Truth be told, much as you complain about Moana's incessant babbling, you're getting kinda worried - toward the beginning, not even your lighthearted quips and good-natured ribbing could get her to speak. Even after you'd trailed off into a silence more awkward than you're willing to admit, telling yourself it was to make her uncomfortable enough just to break it, Moana's made not even a sound.

"This doesn't feel right," she says slowly, ponderously, still holding that staff like it's a newborn child. You're relieved that it's not something more along the lines of _I'm gonna go sulk to the ocean for the next few days_ , at least she's actually opening up to you about it.

The doubt, the uncertainty that comes with being immortal, though - that you can deal with. It's with a grin perhaps a smidge larger than you'd intended that you respond. "It's not supposed to feel right. 's immortality, Curly, it's gonna take a little while to settle correctly."

"No, not that," she replies, frowning at her hands. Then she gives her staff a little shake. "This. It doesn't feel right."

"I mean, that's gonna take a little while to get used to too."

Her frown only deepens. "I know. But I miss my oar. It's like - it's like you've grown up with this particular figurine all your life, say it's of Tangaroa, and one day someone gives you a new one. Let's say, of Punga. And they justify it with 'well sharks are cooler than whales!' and yeah, maybe that's true, but you kinda miss your old one."

"Curly, I think most people would pick Tangaroa over Punga any day - "

"Maui, that's not the point!" she huffs. She turns the staff discontentedly in her hands, running her fingers over the wood and furrowing her brows at it. "I'm sure this staff is a great weapon, but I don't want it. I mean, well, I'd rather have my oar."

"They're both just pieces of wood."

Moana picks up the oar, weighs both of her weapons in one hand, and sighs. "Yeah, I guess so," she replies disconsolately. Mini-Maui elbows you none-too-gently in the side, then jerks his head toward Moana as if to say _be a bit more consoling, please,_ and yeah come to think of it you probably haven't been the most reassuring.

You bind the halyard, thump on over to her. "Why do you want your oar so much more?"

To your surprise, Moana turns faintly pink, staring determinedly at her oar. "I got used to it. I dunno, I've been fighting with it for so long, it just feels weird to use anything else, you know?"

You might've believed that a couple of minutes ago. But she's turning red, so there's definitely more to this story.

"Mhmm, mhmm, what else?"

Moana mumbles something unintelligible, and a huge shark's grin curls up your lips. Oh, you've got her now. "Sorry, Curly, didn't quite catch that."

She glares at you, then mutters something else almost as quietly, but you faintly catch the word _carving_. For a second you blink at her, running your eyes over the oar anew. There's no new woodwork on it, just the polished blade and the sturdy handle and the little scratches you made with Heihei's beak all those years ago -

Oh.

Your smirk only widens further, and Moana's face drops in exasperation. "How sentimental!" you crow, waggling your eyebrows at her. "I didn't even know you had it in you! Well, Moana. Chief of Motunui. I gotta say, I'm touched." You grab the oar right from her hands, flip it around so that the carving is facing her, and draw it upward so that your shit-eating grin is right behind it. Her eyes flicker from the oar to you and back, face still flaming.

"Stop it, Maui," she groans, and you laugh.

"But how could I pass up an opportunity like this?" you hoot. "The demigoddess Moana, attached to an oar because of some scratches in the wood from a decade ago!"

She snatches it back quick as you can blink, and doesn't hesitate to jam the heel into your stomach. You double over, half-laughing, and a look of resignation crosses her face. "I knew you were going to be insufferable about this," she sighs, but there's a little grin curling up the side of her lips that means she's not actually mad. "Why do I tell you anything, really?"

"Because I'm your favorite demigod."

"You're the only one I know, Maui."

"Details!" You pick up the staff she'd discarded, run a contemplative eye over it. "Y'know, if it really matters that much to you, I could run and get Drumstick, and we can do an autographing part two."

She snatches the staff too, tearing it from your fingers. "No," she replies firmly. "No desecrating my gift from the gods."

"I'd just be adding my own demigodly flair!"

"You'd be ruining it," she replies smoothly, settling the staff against the mast out of your reach, "and besides. It wouldn't be the same."

Huh. Dumb oar really does mean a lot to her. You regard her for a long second, oar hefted easily in one hand and the staff discarded behind her back, and shake your head ruefully. "Y'know, Curly. Te Fiti's fond of you."

She narrows her eyes at him, unjustifiably suspicious. You're wounded. "Yes…?"

"And since you're a demigoddess, you've got a teensy little bit more ground to ask favors."

"Maui, where are you going with this?"

You hold your hands up in self-defense. "All I'm saying, Curly, is that if you're really attached to this weapon…well, powers aren't permanently attached to one object." You give your hook a pointed little twitch, and the memory of Te Fiti's hand uncurling to reveal your new hook flashes across her eyes at the same moment it does yours. "You could, hypothetically, go to Te Fiti and - "

" - ask her to move my powers to my oar!" she finishes for you, voice rising in excitement. "Yeah!"

You open your mouth to point out reasonable safety precautions, like _Te Fiti is a week's sail and we hardly have provisions for two days_ and _some of the gods might take offense at their gift being rejected_ , but Curly's already made herself at home on the prow of the boat. Anyway, you know how arguing with Moana tends to go - that is, your defeat. You can count on five stubby fingers how many verbal spars you've won with her.

You look for a little while at the staff. It's good-quality, of course, made of the finest wood and woven together so that every fiber hums with magic. There's a faint blue sheen pulsing around the finish, glimmers of light within the fibers of the wood itself, counting out a rhythm that you suspect matches up with the ocean somehow. Magical engravings carpet the sides, swirls and clouds and even a little hook in the middle.

It's magnificent. Somehow, your little hook-and-heart duo beat it soundly.

New immortals. So sentimental.

You shake your head ruefully and join Moana trailing your feet off the side of the canoe.


End file.
